No Escape From Yourself
by Alara Rogers
Summary: Season 4 finale spoilers. Chaos is inconsistent by nature... even when it would prefer to be consistent. Discord is afraid that his nature ensures he'll inevitably betray those he cares about again, someday, and he can't figure out how to stop himself.
1. No Exit

I'm not safe.

I mean I'm not safe for others to deal with, not that I'm personally in danger. Although I suppose perhaps I am. It's hard to feel threatened when the danger is yourself; it's much easier for me to recognize the danger to others, mainly because whatever I do, I know I'll think it's a good idea at the time. Which is the problem, you see.

I'm going to do it again. Sooner or later. I don't want to, I'd do anything to prevent it, but I can't figure out how. Because I never saw it coming that I was going to do it the first time, before I did it, and then it seemed like a good idea so I did it, because that's what I do. I'm Chaos. I'm inconsistent. It's not at all difficult to convince me to change my mind, but it's impossible to get my mind to stay changed, because I am change. The only thing constant about me is my inconstancy.

I used to think that was a good thing.

Something else that's changed, I suppose.

I have poor impulse control. I'm self-centered. Narcissistic. Poor attention to detail. Short attention span. I go with my gut, pretty much all the time. And I'm much moodier than I look. I try to never let anypony know that they got to me, so I'm laughing all the time, but inside my feelings are frequently... well, chaotic. I know, I know, shocking.

I'm smart enough that I know all these things about myself. (Full disclosure: I am also creative, intelligent, and funny. I _have_ good qualities. Just... none of them matter. My good qualities are all tools, like my magic, that I _could_ use to do wonderful things if I felt like it, except I usually don't feel like it, because of my bad qualities. Which, I suppose, makes me fundamentally... bad. Which would be all right, except I don't want to be anymore. But I don't know how to stop myself.)

I mean, common sense and basic logic should have said Tirek was manipulating me. Of course I don't have any common sense and logic and I have been arguing on and off for centuries, but my own _experience_ should have told me better, because it's my own trick! I'd have done exactly what Tirek did, if I was relatively weak and trying to recharge my powers and someone vastly more powerful than me turned up to take me captive and they had as blatantly obvious a weakness as the fact that they'd just switched sides. How did I not know this? How wasn't it instantly obvious to me that it was a scam?

But he called me powerful. Legendary. Fluttershy calls me sweet. Which feels nice at times, but diminishing. I wanted to be intimidating when I went to face Tirek in the first place, and what he was saying made me feel like he'd have no respect for me if I was on the ponies' side, and the thought of being seen as a weak sap by someone so infamous himself hurt my pride. I mean, who am I? Fluttershy's goofy friend who is roundly disliked by almost all of her other friends, almost all of the time? Or Discord, Master of Chaos, the terror of ponykind? I could be Fluttershy's friend and have her love, but nopony else's and no respect either. Or I could be Tirek's friend and ally, have his friendship, which is considerably less sappy and sweet than Fluttershy's but made me feel strong, and have the respect and fear of all ponykind.

It was the wrong decision. It makes me sick to remember it. But I know why I did it. I know what the feelings he played on were, I know exactly how he manipulated me. And I don't know how to guarantee that it won't happen again, because I don't think much about yesterday or tomorrow. I live in the moment and I do what my whims tell me to do. Because I'm Chaos, and that's how it is.

I was in my element when I was hated. I knew exactly what I was doing, I was on top of my game. I was an expert at being hated and at making ponies frightened or miserable, I was good at it and I enjoyed it. They respected and feared me, they did what I told them to do, and nopony ever tried to stop me. Well, except for Celestia and Luna... who I betrayed. I spent centuries thinking to myself they were the ones who betrayed me, they were the ones who turned on me, but no, that was never right, was it? I could have had Celestia's forgiveness if I'd ever admitted I was wrong... but I liked being evil. Because being good hurts.

Because no matter how much I ever tried to make friends, no matter how much I ever tried to fit in with the ponies, it wasn't possible. I'm not like them. I'm less like them than the majority of the other beings on this planet. They don't understand how beautiful Chaos is, and they want to shackle themselves to routines and traditions and all that stupid stuff, and I don't get them and they don't get me and they would never be my friends. I'll give Tia credit, she tried to get me to make friends, but I knew it wasn't going to happen so I wasn't having any. She and Luna were like family to me, and I always felt that was all I needed, because even if family doesn't understand you and you don't fit in, they still love you.

Turns out I was wrong about that.

Ponies don't like me. They don't want to be my friend. They're afraid of me, or annoyed by me. And when I want to be their friend, when I want to be good and to have a place in their society, that _hurts_. Whereas when I want to terrify them and make them obey me and entertain me with their suffering, well, then that works great! I can have exactly the kind of relationship with ponies I want, as long as what I want is a relationship where I make them cry or grovel to me.

Fluttershy told me I could have real friends. Sometimes I hate her because it's not true. But I love her because it's true for her. I can have _one_ real friend. The others still can't stand me. Well, mostly. I have no idea about Twilight, she'll go to the ends of Equestria for me and she'll spend a week researching how exactly did I manage to get myself sick and she'll declare me to be her friend even though I betrayed her... but she never wanted to be around me. That's changed now, but I don't think it's changed for the right reasons. I think she still can't stand me but she tries to keep me close because she's afraid of what I'll do if I go off by myself, and it hurts and it makes me angry but the thing that hurts the worst is that I can't blame her. Who _would_ trust me? Who would want to be my friend?

Fluttershy's an idiot. She never saw it coming that I would betray her. She believed in me. Who could possibly be stupid enough to believe in me? Why would she ever...

I don't deserve a friend like her.

I wish I could be worthy of her. I wish I could be what she thinks I am, what she wants me to be. But I'm not. And I don't see any way to make myself be. And that's the problem.

Ponies will never like me and want to be my friend, in general, because I am unlikeable and untrustworthy. And this will always make part of me wish to be evil again. Because when I was working with Tirek, up to the point where I first got a faint inkling that he was using me, I loved every minute of it. I was in my element again, finally. Ponies weren't running in fear from me because I asked them the price of the pear sandwiches, they were running in fear from me because I was trying to catch them and hand them over to my ally to be drained of their magic. They were supposed to fear me.

It felt good. It felt right. It felt like this was always who I was supposed to be.

I'm terrified that it _is_ who I'm supposed to be. And the fact that I don't want it doesn't change the fact that that's who I am, and who I'll always be. And every time I'm offered the temptation to turn evil again, strongly enough... I don't know how I won't fall.

Because the fact that I despise myself _now_ and I think I'm horrible and I wish I was dead won't change the fact that at some point, that will change and I'll resent having friends and caring about ponies, because when I'm evil I don't have a conscience and therefore my conscience can't hurt me, and when I'm evil I don't have friends and therefore I don't miss having friends or wish I had some, and it's empty and it's hollow and there's no real joy in it but there's no pain either. It feels good the way scarfing down twenty-seven cupcakes or having a foursome with three hot ponies whose names you don't know feels good. It satisfies your needs right now, and if it can't satisfy anything deeper or more meaningful, well who needed deep meaning anyway? Live in the now, and you'll never have to care that your life is totally meaningless! Besides, why does Chaos incarnate want meaning in his life anyway?

I don't want to go back there but when I was offered a chance to go back there I took it without even thinking about it much because I do want to go back there, and I hate myself for wanting it but I know that if I did go back all the way, if I hardened myself the way I did when Celestia and Luna were fighting me and I made myself stop caring, then I wouldn't hate myself anymore and it wouldn't hurt, and I hate myself even more knowing that. I want friendship but I don't deserve it and if I didn't want it it wouldn't hurt that I don't deserve it. Right now it hurts when they hate me because I want them to like me, and it hurts when they like me because I know I'm not worthy of that.

I'm going to fall again. I don't want to. The me that I am now hates that guy, and hates myself because I know that someday I'll be that guy again and the me that I am now doesn't know how to stop it, because the me that I am now is totally and completely miserable and the evil guy won't be, and I'll break under the pain. I know I will.

So I've been thinking about how to protect my friends, and the world, from what will happen when I fall again. Because it's inevitable. Because I'm horrible and it will always hurt less to embrace being horrible and revel in it than it is to feel guilt and self-doubt and self-hatred over it.

I can't give up my powers. They have to go _to_ someone, just like the alicorns' powers did. Mine don't work quite like theirs; theoretically I _could_ disperse my power, just drain it into the world, but the world absorbing that much Chaos energy would probably have worse effects in the long run than anything I might consciously decide to do. So getting rid of the power either screws over the whole planet, or transfers them to someone else who has much less experience with controlling them than I do, and they're as likely to corrupt anyone I transferred them to as they were to corrupt me. I wasn't always evil. I remember that.

I can't kill myself either, for the same reason. Chaos will simply choose a new avatar and dump the power on them. Fluttershy and Twilight and Celestia will have to deal with someone they don't know, someone who possibly started out a lot more evil than I started out, or who thinks death and killing is funny, or at the very least who was never their friend and never had anything deep down inside that wanted to be. It'd solve the problem of _my_ suffering, but so would turning evil. I'm trying to come up with a way to save the ponies who actually call me a friend, not hurt them.

I can't split off my dark side so I can be good. That trick never works. It'd inevitably result in me, or my friends, fighting my evil avatar, who'd be more ruthless and more chaotic and therefore more powerful, so we'd lose. Besides, if I got rid of the parts of me that make me likely to turn evil again, what's left of me? Chaos isn't inherently either good or evil, but the fact that the ponies don't understand it and don't like it isolates me from them, which hurts, which makes me want to turn off my conscience so I can just do whatever I want without hurting. I can't take my chaos out of me and have anything at all left.

I once tried discording myself. I turned into a kind of pathetic, emotionally needy wretch who'd do anything at all to be loved or at least liked. Quite aside from the fact that I despise that guy even _more_ than I despise Evil Me, that isn't likely to make me _less_ vulnerable to being emotionally manipulated into doing the wrong thing. I mean... part of the reason I worked with Tirek was... I'm embarrassed to say this even to myself but... I thought we were friends. I thought he liked me. I wasn't ever going to say so in so many words (although I think maybe at the end when he drained me, and I was so shocked at his betrayal that I couldn't even think to teleport or run until it was too late, I might actually _have_ said so in so many words), but... yeah. I thought I'd found a friend who'd appreciate me for myself, who wouldn't try to restrain my chaos but who reveled in it as much as I did.

Yes. I should have known better. I'm stupid, all right? I mean I am very, very intelligent, but sometimes I'm incredibly stupid.

So what am I supposed to do? I can't die, I can't get rid of my powers, I can't make myself less likely to turn evil again. I try to enjoy Fluttershy's friendship but I know that even though she says she's forgiven me, I hurt her badly and I don't think I can ever really make it right. And I don't feel like I should even hope to make it right because she shouldn't trust me or even like me, and I'm just being selfish in wanting her to be my friend because I don't deserve friends. Twilight's always in my face, asking me about abstruse points of magical theory, making me help her translate ancient tomes or getting me to give her hints about some fine point of magic, and I admit I enjoy that. When we're talking about magic, it's abstract enough that for a little while I can forget my guilt and shame. But she never did it before. She says she's doing it because I was helpful in the whole thing with the keys to the box but I don't believe her. I think she's doing it to keep me close by and keep me emotionally invested in the ponies so I don't fall again. And I can't _blame_ her, it's the smart thing to do and I don't deserve anything better, but it hurts to think she's just acting like a friend to make me stay good and she doesn't really care.

I've tried a few times to just leave. Disappear into the Everfree or some other wild, distant place. I went to the moon for a little while because without the Elements, not even Luna can get there. But it turns out that Luna may not be able to get there, but she can send communication. She located me and started dumping "Please come home" letters from Fluttershy all over me until I couldn't take the guilt trip anymore and came home. They won't let me go off by myself for any significant length of time. They tell me it's because they're worried about me but they were never worried about me before. It's the same thing. They're afraid I'm going to fall again. I don't even know why that hurts, I'm afraid of the same thing.

It hurts that they don't trust me. But that's stupid. _I_ don't trust me. I wouldn't have any respect for their intelligence if they did trust me. So why does it hurt?

I even tried convincing the Tree to put me back in stone. Spent half an hour arguing with the damned thing. I realize it probably would have looked ridiculous, a fully grown draconequus arguing with a crystalline tree that doesn't talk, but I've never been ashamed of looking ridiculous. Not only did it refuse to do it, it summoned Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie. It doesn't talk, even to them, so when they showed up they had no idea I'd just spent half an hour trying to commit suicide by tree; Fluttershy just had this feeling that a friend who needed help was by the Tree, and Pinkie had her Pinkie Sense thing telling her something similar. I didn't tell them what I was doing there, and I pretended nothing was wrong, and they didn't believe me but they didn't press it too hard, since I think they're well aware that absolutely nothing they say will get me to tell them the truth if I don't want to.

They took me out to dinner and fed me tea and cupcakes.

I was going to have cucumber sandwiches and then I remembered bringing the cucumber sandwiches just before I captured all of them for Tirek and I lost my appetite completely. I ate a couple of cupcakes anyway because when Pinkie demands that you eat cupcakes, it's just easier to do it than to fight with her about it, but I could barely taste them.

I haven't done anything particularly chaotic in a week. Or even used my magic much, aside from being asked to do favors. I feel awful. I feel like there's nothing worthwhile in my existence and if I can't create chaos there's nothing that gives me any joy at all. I'm doing it because I want to feel this way. I don't deserve to be happy. I don't deserve to be entertained. And it makes me feel like, maybe there's some hope for me to not be an evil monster if I can control the desire for chaos. Except I can't, because it's the only thing I like to do, the only thing I want to do, and the desire to do it nags at me constantly, and the only reason I don't do it is, I feel too awful to want to do anything I actually want to do because I shouldn't be happy.

There were some moments, right after the girls saved the day, when I felt like it was all going to be all right. Like they'd forgiven me and well, what's past is past, right? Can't change it, so you might as well move forward! Sure, I got the impression that maybe Fluttershy was just a little bit more reticent around me than I was used to, and Rainbow Dash was scowling at me even more than she used to, but, well, learning experience all around, now let's move on! Let it go already.

But I can't let it go because it's still _there_. I didn't do it because I was mind controlled. I didn't do it because I made a silly mistake. I did it because it's in my nature, because part of me would rather be feared and hated than have friends because at least then the lack of friends won't hurt, and I don't know how to change my nature so it's not a part of me anymore. So I'm afraid it's going to happen again. And right now, the me that I am now doesn't know how to keep the me that I will be from betraying everypony I care about, again, one of these days, because the me that I will be won't care about the opinion of the me that I am now. Any more than the me that I was when I faced Tirek cared about the opinion of the me that I was when Fluttershy took care of me when I was sick.

I don't know what to do. I'd do anything to protect her from the me that I will be, but nothing I've thought of can possibly work, and most of it will just make matters worse. I'd even give my life, right now, except that _that_ would almost certainly make matters worse.

I don't know what to do.

* * *

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	2. An Idea So Crazy It Just Might Work

As Discord leaned up against the wall, sipping an endless glass of garlic cider and wishing that the field harmonics radiating throughout the castle allowed him to turn into a flower growing out of the wall, Rarity approached him. Discord raised an eyebrow in surprise. "Why, Rarity! What brings you to my humble corner?"

Rarity smiled at him. "Well, darling, Twilight called Pinkie into an important conversation of some sort, so Pinkie deputized me to make sure that every partygoer is having fun. And it does look to me as if you aren't. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I expected you to be more, mmm, outgoing at a party."

He looked down at his garlic cider. There was no alcohol in it - Discord neither needed nor wanted the senses-dulling crutch of alcohol to enjoy chaos, and if there wasn't any chaos, it was probably because he'd decided that all things considered, he should lay low, which wouldn't be particularly compatible with getting drunk. But he felt strange - wrung out from the events of the day, from the emotional roller coaster he'd been on since he'd betrayed his friends, and been betrayed by Tirek in turn, and spent what had felt like a very long time believing he was going to die, putting all of his effort into trying to save the ones he'd betrayed, and failing at that as well. If it hadn't been for Twilight...

"Truth be told," he admitted, and wondered why he was admitting it, and to Rarity of all ponies, "I don't much like parties. I keep thinking I should, because of all the things you ponies do with some frequency it's the one activity I'd expect to generate a good bit of chaos, but... Well, it's easy to see that I don't really belong here, do I."

"Of course you do! Our success today was as much through your aid as anypony else's. I will admit, I thought you a perfect beast for betraying us as you did, and I can't say I will soon forget Fluttershy's tears-"

"I can't either." He sighed. "She was spending some time with me for a while before she had to go home to feed the animals, but... it felt... wrong. We were simply... not talking. I mean I've gone hours in Fluttershy's presence where neither of us are talking before and it didn't feel wrong, but... I felt like we should be talking but I didn't know what to say."

"It will take some time," Rarity said. "She's forgiven you, I know, but... it will take her some time to put this behind her. You did break her heart, you know."

"I didn't," he said, staring at his cider as if he expected great revelations to come bubbling out of it. "I didn't think she'd take it that hard. I didn't think she really, truly trusted me." Discord slumped against the wall. "I've probably lost that trust forever, now."

"She had far less reason to trust you when she first reformed you," Rarity said. "Focus on doing the right thing, on living your life in a way that she can be proud of you and regain her trust in you, and eventually, you will have it back. I know Fluttershy, she's very, very forgiving."

"But you're not. So what are you doing over here?"

"Why, I've come to ask you to dance," Rarity said. "This is your party too... and while I fear it will be some time before our fellow citizens regain _their_ trust in you-" she glanced around at the various Ponyville residents and other Equestrians who were either not looking at her and Discord, or who were shooting glares at Discord - "-I'm sure it will go faster if we remind them that this was your victory too. Without you, we'd never have gained the last key to defeat Tirek, and the box would remain unopened. Twilight feels certain that in the future we will be able to access the Rainbow Powers of Harmony anytime we truly need to, so in a sense, by betraying us you restored to us the power we lost earlier this year when your _vines_ forced us to return the Elements to the Tree. And these powers are better than the Elements were, in the sense that they're part of us and can't be removed. So for all your chaos, in the end you've made Harmony stronger." She smiled brightly at him.

Discord wished he knew how he felt about that. He'd wanted the mares to open the box. He'd wanted them to have this power, before he'd changed sides and thrown in with Tirek. He'd certainly wanted them to have it when that power was the only thing he could imagine to undo his mistake and restore Equestria from Tirek's grasp... not to mention the only thing that might save his own life. But now that they had it, it was sinking in that in a sense he _had_ betrayed himself by siding with Harmony, just as Tirek had been claiming all along. And yet, on the third paw, he felt bad about himself, about his nature, about chaos itself, right now. If he was betraying a true nature that had made him throw away every chance he'd ever had in the past at happiness, was that really wrong?

"How does asking me to dance accomplish any of this?" he asked.

"Well, I _am_ one of the Bearers of the Elements. Twilight and I _personally_ ensured that all the unicorns of Equestria had their powers restored to them-"

"How'd you do that?"

"Astral travel of some sort, I believe, and it's rude to interrupt, darling. The point I was making is that my standing, right now, is impeccable. If I am seen dancing with you, it will reassure any ponies who see it that you have been accepted by the Bearers. Twilight and Pinkie can't do it because they are the Princess of Friendship and Ponyville's party pony, respectively; they're expected to extend a hoof in friendship to, well, nearly anyone. Fluttershy's gone home and the poor dear would simply die out on a dance floor anyway. Not that she has justification, she has _wonderful_ grace and I've seen superb dance moves from her when she's just with us, but you know how she is."

"So you want to dance with me to prove to the ponies here at the party that I can be trusted."

"Exactly!"

A rush of some emotion he couldn't entirely identify went through him. Rarity had never been one of his favorite ponies; he _still_ thought her love affair with Tom was one of his best jokes ever, and her pretentious ways annoyed him. But here she was, placing her reputation on the line to try to save his.

If he did this, maybe he'd fit in better. The reason he didn't like parties, despite the potential for chaos, was how obvious it was when he attended one that nopony wanted him there. This hadn't been an exception; nearly every pony in the room, aside from the Bearers, the Princesses, and the Cutie Mark Crusaders, looked at him with fear or hate in their eyes or avoided looking at him at all. Including Financial Security, the insurance salesman who'd been using his presence to drum up business and had always been friendly with him as a result, and Filthy Rich, whose cutie mark probably should have been in "sucking up to powerful ponies and other entities for potential personal gain". Even the selfish ponies who'd been friendly with him because they saw potential benefit in it for them hated him now.

Twilight and Pinkie had both made a few sporadic attempts to draw him away from the wall, but they had the whole party to entertain, and the time Fluttershy had spent over here with him had been painful in its awkwardness. The Cutie Mark Crusaders had been cheerful and friendly with him as they raced madly around the party, but they were too energetic to stay in one place and he wasn't sure they even knew of his role in events. Celestia and Cadance had been friendly enough, and Luna had pretended to be civil - at least she hadn't attacked him in public - but they didn't have time to make for him either. Maybe if he danced with Rarity ponies would get the idea that he hadn't really betrayed them, that it had all been part of an elaborate plan to ensure Tirek's defeat and grant the Rainbow Powers to his friends.

But of course that was a lie. He _had_ betrayed them. And on any other day a lie that made him look better would have seemed like a great idea, but not today. "What makes you think I _can_ be trusted? Maybe they're right." He sighed heavily. "Luna certainly thinks so."

"Princess Luna? Why would you say that?"

"Because she gave the bouquet I gave her as an apology to Pinkie, and Pinkie ate it."

Rarity's hoof flew to her mouth. "Oh dear! I'm sure Pinkie didn't mean anything by that!"

"They were candy flowers." He'd made them for Celestia millennia ago, a field that just the two of them would visit, and later on Luna had joined them; he remembered it like it was only a short while ago, the babbling brook that had literally babbled like a foal, the meadow and the hill covered completely with candy daisies in different colors and flavors. When he'd given the bouquet to Celestia, to apologize to her and thank her for his second chance, and winked at her, trying to evoke her memories of that time, she'd blushed, thanked him, and eaten the bouquet with apparent delight. When he'd given the second bouquet to Luna, she had accepted with glowering bad grace and then promptly regifted it to Pinkie without telling her where it was from. "I'd hardly expect anything from Pinkie _other_ than eating them. I know Luna didn't tell her where they came from. It'd be one thing if she had, and she gave it to Pinkie because she didn't want the sweets or because she wanted to share, but she said nothing. She was just trying to get rid of it."

"I'm honestly quite surprised. I would expect Princess Luna, of all ponies, to understand the desire for redemption after committing a betrayal..."

"She thinks I'm faking it. And for all you know she could be right."

Rarity shook her head. "Discord, the draconequus who drew a target on his chest and asked us to hurry up and shoot him because you had entirely failed to notice that we'd resisted your magical corruption is not the great liar and manipulator that so many have tried to claim you to be. Sweetie Belle does a better job of pretending to be sorry than you do. So I am thoroughly convinced of your sincerity, right now."

"Why, thank you, Rarity. I believe that's the most backhooved compliment I've ever received," Discord said sardonically.

"Oh, you're quite welcome, darling," Rarity said sweetly. "So, about that dance?"

He shook his head. "Another time, perhaps. For tonight, I'd rather be a spectator than a spectacle." He considered transforming into a giant pair of glasses, but the harmonics were interfering with his magic and to tell the truth, he just wasn't feeling very funny right now.

"Ah, well. I do understand, but if you change your mind, simply come find me." She left his side, and within minutes was dancing with another stallion. By his count, she had danced with every male creature besides him, the younger colts, and Owlowliscious at least one time, and Spike three times, and a few of the stallions twice. Discord sighed. The incongruity of a large draconequus dancing with a small elegant pony would have been hilarious, but he didn't need the pity right now, and he was telling the truth about wanting to hang back and watch, for once.

To be honest, he hadn't thought Luna would accept his apology. He was just grateful that Celestia had.

Cadance had left already, she and Shining Armor having taken off to head back to the Crystal Empire shortly after the Bearers had performed an impromptu joint dance and song about friendship and rainbows, or something... he hadn't really been paying attention to the lyrics. He hadn't had a chance to even begin to think about giving her an apology gift, even though he owed her one more than he owed one to Luna... Luna had never trusted him, and Luna had never done anything for him, not since she and Celestia had begun fighting him anyway. Cadance had helped to take care of him when he was sick, and had spoken on his behalf to Celestia before they'd come here to Twilight's new castle. He'd have to come up with something for her, eventually. Not flowers, Shining Armor might misunderstand and while normally that would be hilarious, he wasn't in the mood for generating disharmony right now. Which might mean there was something seriously wrong with him, but he didn't feel like thinking about it.

He owed all of the Bearers some sort of apology, too. The thought of what that could possibly be paralyzed him, though. What could he possibly give to Fluttershy to even begin to make up for what he'd done? And if he couldn't give something to Fluttershy, how could he give anything to any of the Bearers?

So he was left with nothing to do but watch the party, which refused to degenerate into entertaining chaos, and under the circumstances he didn't feel comfortable trying to give it a push. He wanted to leave and go find something entertaining to do, or _something_, but he didn't know what he could possibly do when the idea of creating even minor chaos made him feel so very uncomfortable. What was _wrong_ with him? Chaos was his life, his raison d'etre; was he afraid of what would happen to him if he stepped out of line? No, he could blow off some steam making the apples in Applejack's orchard into zap apples - she'd actually probably appreciate that - or give wings to rabbits (except for Angel Bunny, who was insufferable already), or some other kind of chaos that wouldn't cause anypony any harm, and that certainly wouldn't result in anything terrible happening to him. And yet he didn't want to do it. He didn't feel safe doing it, but he didn't know what the danger filling him with such anxiety actually _was._

If he could go somewhere that nopony could see him, he could create chaos and not feel bad about it. But Celestia had sentenced him to remain in Ponyville for the indefinite future. As punishments went, given the scale of the betrayal he'd committed and how horrible the consequences of his actions had almost been, it was a mere slap on the wrist, but he didn't dare violate it; Celestia had been deadly serious when she'd told him this was his last chance. And there was nowhere in Ponyville proper he could go that didn't belong to some pony or another, or the town itself, so there was nowhere he could go that his chaos wouldn't be noticed. Theoretically he could leave, if accompanied by one of the Bearers or a princess, but all the ones that were still here at the party were partying and he didn't want to ask anypony for help anyway, not now especially.

And at some point he was going to have to figure out where he was going to stay tonight. Judging from the glares he was getting, he wasn't going to have an easy time finding a place to sleep. He didn't want to go to Fluttershy's house and ask her if he could stay there; he felt certain she'd say yes, but he felt equally certain that she'd be doing it out of obligation and not out of affection, not right now, and he could cheerfully impose on any pony for what he wanted any other day but not today, not Fluttershy, not if it would make her angry with him for doing it. But it wasn't as if he had a lot of other options.

The anger and fear and hatred the ponies of Ponyville were directing his way would normally delight him. Such emotions fed disharmony, and disharmony was his bread and butter. And it was hardly as if he wasn't used to it. Ponies disliked chaos, what a shocking new development! It would have broken him centuries ago if he hadn't learned to love it.

Except he wasn't loving it, not right now. They didn't hate him because they just hated chaos like mindless golems of harmony. They hated him because he'd rounded them up or held them down and let Tirek steal their powers, and after Tirek had done the same to him, he _knew_ exactly how horrible that was. He'd been proud of himself for keeping them all alive, making sure Tirek didn't kill any of his victims, but now that he'd been through it himself he wasn't entirely sure that death wouldn't have been preferable... obviously not in the long run, now that everything was resolved and he had his powers back, but if he'd had to live indefinitely that way? And _his_ magic would have eventually returned to him. The ponies' magic would never have.

He deserved to be hated, right now.

_And isn't this what you wanted?_ he thought to himself bitterly. _You wanted ponies to hate and fear you for good reasons, instead of spooking even when you were trying to be nice. So congratulations! You gave them a great reason! Have a cupcake and celebrate, every pony in Equestria's been reminded that you're a villain and why! Isn't that what you wanted? You wanted to be evil because it hurt too much to try to be good and be rejected for it? So now you can be rejected for being evil! Isn't this a big improvement?_

Maybe he'd ask Rarity if he could crash at her place. If she'd been willing to dance with him to help him salvage his reputation, she might be willing to let him sleep above her boutique. Or maybe he'd just sleep in one of Applejack's trees so he didn't have to lower himself to begging anypony for a place to stay the night. Or in the branches of Twilight's treehou - oh, right.

He could find a cloud to spend the night on - quite aside from the magic of chaos, his body held the inherent magic of each of his component species, so his pegasus wing gave him the ability to sleep on and walk on clouds just as a pegasus could. But given what he'd done to the local pegasi, he'd have to sleep with one eye open if he didn't want to find his cloud towed out to sea while he was asleep, or dumped over in the heart of the Everfree, or maybe in one of the volcanos down in Mexicavallo.

"Hiya, Discord! What's with the frowny face?"

Discord looked up, startled. He hadn't realized he had been intently staring at the floor. Given that he hadn't been looking up, it was perhaps not wholly surprising that Pinkie had been able to bounce right up to him without him noticing, but he was surprised that he hadn't been looking. "Oh, it's nothing, my dear. This is just... one of your more sedate parties, all things considered. I could use a bit more chaos... but under the circumstances, I can certainly understand why."

"Yeah, it's not as boring as the Gala but it does have to be one of the slower parties because of all the nobility and stuff that Celestia said had to come so they'd recognize that Twilight's really and truly and for sure a princess now, instead of just princess-y or something. Sorry about that! We could kick things up a notch now that most of the nobles have gone back to Canterlot!"

He smiled wanly. "That's quite all right, Pinkie. It's been a long day. Eventually your friends will need to sleep, even if you don't."

"Yeah, Spike already went to sleep! It's funny because he's sleeping right under the stage with the band! Like you would think loud noises would wake up a pony but because he's a dragon he likes to sleep with loud noises, or something! Maybe because dragons are really really loud when they snore!"

"Or possibly because if he's sleeping under the band he can't possibly hear Twilight calling him if she wants him to help with something."

Pinkie giggled. "That could be it! Which reminds me of the TOTALLY MOST AWESOME NEWS EVER! I was talking to Twilight and guess what? Guess what?"

"Hmm. A little hint, please? Is it bigger than a breadbox?"

"It's the BIGGEST THING EVER!" Pinkie started bouncing as if the ground beneath her feet was a trampoline. "Twilight picked me to be her first Minister! Not her First Minister like Prime Minister which is apparently a kind of ruler like a princess except they won a popularity contest sort of like a mayor except what if the mayor got elected by the city council and it was for an ENTIRE COUNTRY, but the first Minister she's picked for her cabinet, which is not where she keeps her plates and cups but is apparently where she keeps her advisors! I'm not sure I would like staying in a cabinet all day but she says it's not like that kind of cabinet and she's made me the Minister of Events! Do you know what this MEANS?"

"That if you win a popularity contest you can rule Friendship with an iron hoof?" Discord asked dryly.

"No, it means PARTIES! Because she's the Princess of Friendship and the best way to make friends with new ponies and new griffons and dragons and zebras and everybody is to have parties for them! So I get to plan all the official parties for the Friendship Outreach which is what she is calling her mission to spread friendship! WHEEEEEE!" She grabbed Discord's paws in her hooves and with surprising strength swung him around in a circle. Her intent was probably simply to swing him like a dance partner, but Discord deliberately let go of gravity so that Pinkie ended up swinging him around through the air with his full length stretched out behind him, causing his tail to barely miss whacking a few ponies in the face. At the same time she was spinning herself away from the wall, so by the time she came around to the completion of the circle, they had managed to get slightly more than Discord's full length away from the wall, allowing her to complete the arc without letting any part of him smack the wall. Which was good, because given the fact that the walls were made of pure Harmonic crystal, Discord wasn't sure he could have phased himself through them as he'd originally planned. "Isn't this the BEST NEWS EVER?"

Discord landed on his hoof as Pinkie released him, spun around once like a ballet dancer, and then set his dragon foot down and pulled his tail in. "It certainly does seem exciting, though I have to admit that on a personal level the news that I was being let out of my stone prison has it beat in the best news competition."

"Oh yeah, that was pretty good news for you too! But anyway! So I had to quit my job which is sad because I love to bake things and the Cakes have been really great friends and bosses but they understand I won't have time to bake at a bakery when I'm the Minister of Events for the Friendship Outreach! And I'm going to be moving in here at the castle because how can Twilight be the Princess of Friendship if she doesn't even live with any of her friends? I mean she lives with Spike and he's a friend, but she lived with him anyway and he's really more like family, which is not exactly the same thing as a friend!"

"Trust me, Pinkie, I'm well aware of the distinction."

"But Fluttershy can't do it because she has to live near the Everfree because of all the animals, and Rarity can't because she has to stay with her shop, and Applejack can't because the farm, and Dashie _could_ but she would be sad if she couldn't live in a cloud house anymore! So I'm the only one of Twilight's best friends who can move in with her!"

"I cannot see any possible way this could go wrong," Discord murmured.

"But I can!" Pinkie's eyes grew very big. "What if I bug Twilight? Because Twilight loves her friends but she likes to sit and be quiet and read, and I like to always be talking to ponies or anyone really and always moving around and doing stuff! And I could talk to Spike but he sleeps a lot because he's a dragon and besides he reads too even if most of the time it's just comic books because comic books are fun! And also he has to help Twilight! So what if I'm bored and I want to talk to somepony but Twilight and Spike want to be quiet and read! That would annoy Twilight or else it would make me sad and lonely, but annoying Twilight would also make me sad! So you have to move in with us!"

Discord had been following Pinkie's monologue, despite her high pitch and speed, up until that point. "What."

"Because you always like to do things that are fun and exciting and especially with ponies! Some of the things you like are mean but some things are just fun so if you moved in with us, then if I was bored and lonely and Twilight didn't want to talk to me because she was reading I could hang out with you! And Princess Celestia says you're supposed to live in Ponyville now anyway so if you came and lived with us you would have a place to live!"

"Let me see if I understand you properly, Pinkie. You want me to move into the Castle of Extreme Purpleness with you, Twilight and Spike, in order to _avoid_ annoying Twilight."

"Yup!"

"Have you run this plan past Twilight, by any chance?"

"No, I didn't even think of it until I saw you all lonely and bored looking up against the wall and I started thinking about what if I was lonely and bored because I never get lonely and bored when I'm selling cupcakes because there are always more customers, but if I'm not selling cupcakes to customers anymore then maybe I would be lonely, and Twilight won't always have time for me because she's an introvert and I'm an extravert, but you're an extravert too! Which by the way what is a vert and why does being an extra one mean that we have a lot of energy and we like to be around other ponies?" Before he could even begin to answer the question, she continued. "So then I realized that if I was living with you I wouldn't get lonely and bored and neither would you and that way we don't bug Twilight so much! But sometimes we have to bug Twilight because if she spends all her time with her books then she'll miss out on fun with her friends!"

Discord resisted the urge to create extra paws to facepalm with. Pinkie was either astonishingly naïve, or deep down inside really did want to torment Twilight at least just a little bit for being such an introvert. Or, possibly, against all odds, her plan would actually work, but Discord rather doubted it.

That being said, he didn't actually care. He had just been invited by a friend to live with her. Not because she was trying to reform him, the way Fluttershy had been when she'd first invited him to be a houseguest. Not because she felt some sense of obligation, as Celestia obviously had when she'd offered him a room in the palace (an offer he'd declined, although the portal to his personal chaos dimension that served as his home did usually anchor in Canterlot someplace.) But because she actually _wanted_ him there. Not for his magic, not for unspecified things he could do with his powers, but because she thought he was fun.

This had never happened before. He was frankly stunned.

A few minutes ago he'd have said there were no possible circumstances that would keep him inside this castle any longer than necessary. It had been made by the Tree of Harmony; it resonated with energies that dampened his powers. But Pinkie had invited him to _live_ with her. And Twilight. And if this did in fact result in annoying the living daylights out of Twilight, well, how could that possibly be his fault? He hadn't asked Pinkie to extend him the invitation, and how could he turn down a heartfelt plea from a friend?

"Well, if you want me here so badly, who am I to tell you no? I accept, Pinkie." He squeezed her in a sideways hug. "Roomies!"

"Technically castle-ies, because we aren't gonna share a _room_ but we are all sharing a castle, but I guess that sounds kind of weird!" She squirmed free of him. "C'mere, c'mere! I picked out a room for you already!"

She bounced off, out of the main hall and down one of the corridors. Discord followed her all the way to a side door leading out of the castle. "This is gonna be the garden for Fluttershy! We're going to wall it in with a magic field thingy that lets the animals go in and out if they want to but it blocks mean animals who want to eat the other animals from coming in so they'll be safe! And anypony in Ponyville or from anywhere or even like griffons and things can come into the garden and walk around and it's going to be kind of wild but also safe, like the Whitetail Woods, and no statues, we promise! But maybe some fountains!"

Right now there was nothing there but a grassy field, exactly like the other grassy fields all around the castle. Discord took a deep breath, enjoying the fresh air and lack of harmonic restraint on his magic. "Perhaps you'd like my help with it? I dare say I have some talent at creating a chaotically natural space, and I've gained some experience with Fluttershy at making natural environments that are safe."

"I bet that would be good! She'd like that!"

Pinkie bounced back in through the side door, and pointed to the room nearest the door. "Tadaaa! Right next to the garden 'cause I knew you would want to be near where Fluttershy will probably be when she comes to visit!"

Discord opened the door and surveyed the room. "It's a trifle... small, don't you think?"

"Well, I figured you could make it bigger on the inside with your powers so you wouldn't mind it being small... is that okay? You don't hate it, do you? Please tell me you don't hate it!" She grabbed his chest fur and pulled him toward her, eyes wide and pleading as if she were some romance heroine from a threebit opera begging her _objet d'amour_ for a token of love rather than a party pony arranging logistics.

"No, Pinkie, I don't hate it. It's... fine." It wasn't fine. The harmonics wouldn't allow him to do what she was suggesting, so it really was a tiny room and it really would remain so. But it was wide enough for him to stretch out fully in any of the three basic spatial dimensions, and really, he'd been planning on sleeping in a tree. This would suffice. Otherwise he'd have to admit to Pinkie that his powers were drastically reduced in the castle. He trusted his friends, to some extent, but it was too ingrained in him to never admit to a weakness if he could avoid it; the thought of letting Pinkie know that the castle weakened him made him feel profoundly anxious and unsafe.

Oh, how far he had fallen for the sake of friendship. To even consider living in a place that weakened his powers!... but he'd nearly lost both his powers and his friends today, and of the two, the loss of the friends had hurt the most. He could compromise, if it meant that somepony actually _wanted_ him here.

"Great! Now we just have to go get your things! Princess Celestia said you have to stay in Ponyville unless me or one of the others or one of the princesses is with you, and I know you live in some weird chaosy place that isn't in Ponyville, so I will totally go with you and help you move! Why don't we do it right now?"

"I don't really have anything to move, Pinkie. I make what I want with my powers when I want it."

"But don't you even have any furniture? Or pictures or something? Or I know! Your thinking tree! We totally have to go get your thinking tree and put it in the garden!"

Discord stared at her. "Your memory frightens me sometimes, my dear."

"Did you think I would forget your _thinking_ tree? What kind of a friend would I be if I forgot something important like that?" Pinkie demanded. "Come on, let's go get it!"

He sighed. "I... may possibly no longer have a thinking tree."

"You _don't?_ What happened to it?"

"Well, I got tired of thinking."

"So what did you do with it?"

Discord squirmed slightly. Really, it had been his tree, and he could always make another; why did he feel guilty over the disposition of his own possession? "It, um, might conceivably have... exploded?"

"_Exploded?_" Pinkie's eyes went impossibly wide.

"I confess it, I was _really_ tired of thinking."

"Poor tree!" For a moment it looked as if Pinkie was about to cry. Then she brightened. "Well, I guess that makes _two_ trees we need to grow back!"

"What do you mean two trees?"

"Well, duh! We have to grow Twilight's tree back!"

Discord raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Because oak trees are _well known_ for their tendency to grow back to their former glory within a reasonable pony lifetime, of course."

"Hello? Earth ponies? I was talking to Applejack and she's gonna have teams of her family members and other farmers come out in shifts. Three earth ponies focusing on growing a tree every day and the oak should be as big as Twilight's tree was in three or four years! Which is a lot longer than I wish it would take but even farming ponies with tree experience can't speed it up any more than that!" Her face drooped. "The sad part is we can't grow back the books. We're gonna be gathering up as many book donations as we can but there's some books she had that she can't ever get back 'cause she had the only copy or they were sentimental like the books she scribbled all over when she was a foal but I guess there's not much we can do about that! At least she and Spike and Owlowliscious are all okay, and that's what's important!"

Guilt hit him like a sledgehammer to the gut. He'd been thinking, at least there were no long-term consequences to his betrayal; ponies all had their magic back, none had died, none had been seriously hurt. He'd made sure of that. But Twilight's books were _gone_. Discord often found it hard to quite understand ponies having sentimental attachments to _things_; with his powers and with his level of chronic disorganization, he found it much more convenient to own nothing, but just use his magic to manifest whatever he needed, because anything that he actually owned that he hadn't made himself, he'd inevitably lose.

He did, however, understand the value of information. He'd actually read over half the books in Twilight's library himself, in the months after he'd been released from stone, trying to catch up to the modern era without revealing any part of his own ignorance. Being able to hear ponies speaking, and walk in their dreams while he himself was asleep, had left him much better adjusted to today's age than Luna, but it wasn't a substitute for actual immersion in pony culture, and good comedy _needed_ cultural immersion. There was a time in his life when the idea of information being lost forever would have delighted him, because he'd seen knowledge of the past as a chain, an anchor to Order, but he was too old now to be quite so ideologically pure about Chaos. Knowledge was power. The loss of knowledge was the loss of power. And as he had been brutally reminded today, the loss of power _hurt._

Twilight had saved him. She hadn't had to. She'd offered her power to Tirek in exchange for her friends, and when Tirek had released the five mares and Spike, she'd demanded that he release Discord as well. If she hadn't done that, Discord would have died; Tirek had told him, flat out, that his mistake in revealing to Tirek that chaos would rebuild his magic had doomed him. Tirek needed to kill him to prevent Discord from becoming powerful again. Twilight had known of his betrayal, but not of his crisis of conscience; she hadn't seen how Tirek's betrayal had broken him, she hadn't been there when he'd been struggling to break open the cage he'd made and free her friends. She couldn't possibly have known how horribly sorry he was for what he'd done. And she hadn't known that Tirek intended to kill him, either. But she'd demanded his release anyway, because he was one of her friends.

Every moment he drew breath, now, he owed to Twilight. And it was his fault her books, as precious to her as a hoard of gems was to a dragon, were gone forever.

Or were they?

An incredibly stupid and dangerous idea was forming in his mind. A manic grin spread across his face. "Pinkie, what would you say if I told you there was a way we could save Twilight's books?"

"There _is?_ Oh, what is it, what is it, what is it? We gotta do it! Poor Twilight, if we can save her books she'll be so happy!"

"Well... it _does_ involve a slight possibility of destabilizing the space-time continuum. But not if we're careful!"

"Careful is my middle name!"

"I thought your middle name was Diane."

"That's my other middle name! You can have more than one name in the middle! What are we gonna do?"

"Well... I'm going to need your help." Destroying the space-time continuum would be bad; Fluttershy and Twilight definitely preferred living in linear time. So he couldn't do this the easy way. For a moment the thought of the scope of the project he wanted to undertake daunted him. But Pinkie was so excited, and the thought of how happy Twilight, Twilight who had called him friend and saved his life, would be if he could do this for her, and how happy Fluttershy would be that he did this for Twilight if he succeeded... He took a deep breath. This was going to be very very hard, but worth it. "We're going to go back in time, to moments when Twilight and Spike weren't in the library, and copy the books, and bring the copies to the present. We can't take the risk of actually _taking_ the books; for all I know, Twilight was in her library moments before Tirek blew it up, and she'd notice even a single book missing if it wasn't supposed to be. But if we make copies of all of them, then there's no change to the timestream, no risk to spacetime, and Twilight gets her books back." And never mind how hard it would be to use _Chaos_ to make accurate copies of anything. He'd just have to try his hardest.

"Wow! But how can we do it? When Twilight went back in time she could only go back a week! Maybe if we went back during the Equestria Games? Nopony was in the library then! But that was more than a week ago and Twilight could only go back for a few minutes! We'd need more than that to copy a lot of books!"

"There you go, Pinkie. That's part of what I need your help for." He grinned at her. "Let us not forget that when she's _not_ carrying around the power of four alicorns, I'm much more powerful than Twilight. And Harmonic magic has difficulty with something as unnatural as violating the flow of time, anyway; that's a job for Chaos if there ever was one. So we won't have a hard time going back. The thing we'll have to be very careful about is making sure we don't change anything in the past."

"Okay! Technically going to the past in Ponyville is still Ponyville so you're allowed to do it and besides you're allowed to do it anyway if I'm with you, so let's do it! Let me just write a note for my friends first so they don't get worried, and what time will you bring us back?"

"I have no idea; I have to make sure we don't come back before we left, and most likely we'd cause a great deal of worry if we were gone longer than a day, so let's shoot for sometime tomorrow? Maybe in the afternoon. Maybe morning. It's not as if chaos is exactly predictable."

"Okie dokie lokie! Let's do this!" She removed a purple glitter crayon and sheet of paper from a fold in reality and scribbled a quick note with her hoof. "Note's written, let's go! LEEEROY JENKINS!"

Discord chimed in with her on the second part of her battle cry, and snapped his talon. A moment later there was nothing where he and Pinkie had been standing but a hastily scribbled and very purple note.

* * *

"Sorry to wake you, Twilight, but I figure we might have a problem here."

Twilight rolled over and moaned. There was no furniture in the castle yet; Rarity had brought over a giant pile of blankets so that anypony who felt too tired to head home after the party could crash at the castle, so she was lying on the floor in a pile of very attractive lavender-scented down comforters. "Spike, take a le'r to Princelestia, ask her to turn down the sun..."

Applejack snorted, took off her hat and laid it on Twilight's face. "There ya go, nice and dark. You ready to wake up now? Nopony can find Pinkie."

Twilight groaned and got to her knees, knocking the hat off her face. "She's probably cleaning up. We had a big party last night. Remember?"

"I sure do, which is why it's so surprisin' that she ain't cleaned up a darned thing. That's not like Pinkie Pie at all."

No. It wasn't. Twilight came fully to her hooves. "Did we check Sugarcube Corner?"

Applejack rolled her eyes. "First place I checked when I couldn't find her here. I woke up Dash and she's gettin' Fluttershy, and also she's supposed to be searchin' town once she does that. Figure you can wake up Spike and Rarity."

"She's probably just gone for a walk or out to pick up pastries for breakfast or something..." Twilight trailed off. If Pinkie had gone to pick up pastries, she'd have gone to her former employers, most especially to reinforce that there were no hard feelings about her departure from the job. "Wait! She said something about maybe trying to find a replacement for herself at Sugarcube Corner; maybe she's gone off to interview another baker, or something?"

"Before cleanin' up after the party?" Applejack asked skeptically.

Twilight drooped. Applejack was right. Pinkie took her party responsibilities very, very seriously; there _were_ potential positive events that could distract her so badly that she'd forget about cleanup, but not many. "Okay, have Cheese Sandwich or any of Pinkie's relatives come into town?"

"None of 'em were at the party so far as I know, but Rarity was up a heck of a lot later than I was, so we'd best ask her."

"Right." Twilight trotted over to the bathroom, realized she had no washcloths, soap outside of dish soap, toothpaste, or toothbrush in her new castle, and facehooved. It was hitting her again... everything she owned was gone. _Everything_. Not just the books. The books had hit her hard, and had kept hitting her even throughout the party, and she had had to struggle to keep a smile on her face sometimes when the thought came back, _Your books are all gone_, again and again. But it was so much more than the books. Spike's baby bed, from when he'd been a tiny dragonet barely bigger than his egg had been. The dresses Rarity had made for her over the years, such as her Gala dress or her coronation dress. All of her equipment for her research. The fruit basket of exotic cold-weather fruit that Cadance and Shining had sent her back home with after her trip to the Crystal Empire, that she hadn't gotten around to eating yet. Her _wing scrubby._

No. She couldn't wallow in it right now. Not if Pinkie might be missing. She used her magic to make the water from the tap blast her teeth in a high-powered stream to substitute for the toothbrush she didn't have, swished and spat in the sink, then took a big drink and turned the tap off. That was the best she was going to be able to do until she had a chance to go out for toiletries, or send Spike.

Spike and Rarity looked positively adorable. Rarity had been up late enough to see off the last of the partygoers, and had been too tired to go home, not after she'd already made an evening trip back to the Boutique to pick up blankets for everypony who was going to sleep over. She had made herself a nest of silken comforters and arranged herself on them elegantly, her mane tied back in a scarf to protect it from bed head. And she had obviously found Spike under the stage for the band and carried him to his own little blanket nest, near where she and Twilight were sleeping. Except that at some point during the night Spike had apparently woken up just enough to drag his blanket nest onto Rarity's and pass out next to her. If he were older or Rarity less honorable, Twilight might actually be bothered to see his proximity to Rarity in her sleep, but she knew Rarity would do all she could to avoid either taking advantage of Spike or breaking his heart, and Spike was a teenager by Pony standards but still a very, very young dragon.

"Spike! Rarity! You need to wake up!" She hated to do this when they were adorable and her own head was pounding, but Pinkie might be in danger. "Pinkie's gone missing!"

"Huh, what?" Spike lifted his head blearily. The stereotype of dragons was that they slept deeply unless something threatened their hoard, but Spike had always been quick to rouse if there was a potential threat to any of his friends. "Wait, Pinkie's missing?"

"Really? Oh dear," Rarity mumbled. "Spike, if you could be a dear and move so I can get up...?"

"Oh, sure thing, Rarity!" Spike said, and then apparently realized where he was. "Oh my gosh oh my gosh I wasn't bothering you while I was sleeping, was I? I don't even remember how I got here!"

Rarity smiled wanly at him. "Quite all right. I'm the one who tucked you in so close to me; I might have expected you to slide over in your sleep. Think nothing of it." She got to her hooves. "I absolutely must wash up. What is the situation with Pinkie?"

"Well, she didn't clean up after the party, she's not here, she's not at Sugarcube Corner, and nopony can find her."

Rarity sighed. "That does sound as if she might be in trouble, the poor dear. I promise I will keep my toilette to a _minimum_, but I simply cannot leave this room until I at the least have the opportunity to brush my mane."

"I don't have any hairbrushes," Twilight admitted.

"Oh, of course you don't, darling, you lost everything when that _beast_ destroyed your home," Rarity said. "That's why I brought over brushes and shampoo and soap when I brought the blankets. I do regret that I didn't happen to have any spare toothbrushes, and of course the apothecary was not open that late, so I couldn't buy any."

"You brought over brushes and shampoo and soap?" Twilight's eyes went wide. "I love you. In a deeply friendshippy way."

Rarity patted her on the head. "I know you do, Twilight, and you know it's entirely mutual. Now let's get our minimal morning washing done so we can find Pinkie."

* * *

Once everypony was gathered back at the castle, Twilight went over what they knew.

"So the last anypony remembers seeing Pinkie was when I talked with her about being Minister of Events, and she went and gave the Cakes notice. The Cakes told her to take today off, and then she'd be working for them for the next two weeks while they look for a replacement, and she said she'd try to find somepony for them. Then they went home, and Pinkie told me she had to go tell everypony about her new position. But at that point, Fluttershy had gone home, Applejack and Spike had both been asleep, and Princess Celestia had already said good night and returned to Canterlot."

"She told me," Rainbow Dash said, her voice even hoarser than usual; Twilight recalled Rainbow still being up when Twilight herself had gone to sleep. "I told her that was great and I was excited for her, and then she went bouncing off to tell somepony else."

"And she did indeed tell me," Rarity said. "Shortly after I had a conversation with Discord." She looked around. "Now that I'm mentioning him... where _is_ Discord, do you think?"

"Who cares?" Rainbow said. "Pinkie's what's important here."

"Um, but what if he knows where she went?" Fluttershy pointed out.

Rarity suddenly looked uncomfortable. "Oh, dear. You don't think... they wouldn't have... surely Pinkie wouldn't..."

"Wouldn't what?" Twilight asked.

"Oh, I really don't think so!" Fluttershy said. "Because... because... well, I hope they wouldn't..."

"We talkin' about Pinkie and Discord hooking up, or something else?" Applejack said. "'Cause you get misunderstandin's if you can't just plainly say what you mean."

Rarity blushed. "I, well, _yes_, I was wondering about that possibility... given the understandable excitement of the day, mares have certainly been known to... make impromptu decisions about romance that are perhaps not examples of good judgment..."

"No way!" Rainbow Dash burst out laughing, harshly. "Pinkie and _Discord?_ Not a chance! Pinkie and Cheese are like practically the next best thing to special someponies, and besides who the heck would want to get snuggly with _Discord?_"

Fluttershy visibly cringed. Twilight took a deep breath. "There's an easy way to find out if Discord knows where Pinkie is, or if he's with her," she said. "They don't have to be, uh, romantic to fall asleep together. I've seen firsthoof, Pinkie goes full blast until she gets too tired and then she just goes out like a light, wherever she is. And Discord's not allowed to leave Ponyville without one of us, so if he got Pinkie to go somewhere with him out of Ponyville, and then she fell asleep... well, he has to stay with her. Assuming he's going to stick with his parole, but after yesterday..."

She'd been so angry with Discord for betraying them. The whole time she'd been fighting Tirek, she'd wanted to find him and blast him, as hard as she'd been trying to blast Tirek, to pay him back for his betrayal. And then she'd seen him in one of the bubbles with her friends, slumped over, all the restless energy and annoying humor he usually demonstrated gone, and her anger had drained away, just like that. Maybe Discord had been playing some kind of deeper game against Tirek, pretending to ally with him for some reason, and Tirek had found out. Maybe he really had betrayed all of them, only to be betrayed by Tirek in turn. She hadn't known. All she'd known was that he looked miserable and broken, and she couldn't feel any trace of the Chaos magic that normally boiled out of him every moment. Tirek had been roiling with so much pony magic, she wouldn't have been able to detect Chaos magic inside him anyway, but she'd definitely been able to feel its absence from Discord. And when Tirek had released the others, but not him, and he'd said nothing, just turned away in silence with his head hung low as if he felt too sad or too guilty to even ask for his freedom... she'd felt deeply sorry for him, and she'd demanded that Tirek release him as well.

She hadn't had much of a chance to talk to him since then. He'd thanked her, given her the amulet - which provided the final key, and from the way he'd been enunciating, as if he were on a stage, she was sure he'd known it would - and he'd helped prepare for the party, with a bare minimum of magic use. If she hadn't felt the Chaos in him when her three fellow princesses, Discord, and Spike had all come to join them outside the castle, she might have suspected that he never got his magic back. Then he'd spent most of the party leaning against the wall, and the few efforts she'd made to draw him out had failed. He'd looked depressed, and while he'd sounded almost normal when he spoke, simply the fact that his motions and body language had been subdued suggested that he was hurting inside. She'd felt torn. The part of her that believed in justice said that he _should_ feel sad, he _should_ feel guilty; but the part of her that believed in compassion wanted him to be happier. He'd made a horrible mistake, but he'd made up for it as well as anyone could.

After yesterday, she truly couldn't believe that Discord would actually do something to hurt any of Fluttershy's friends, or deliberately break the one restriction Celestia had placed on him. Not this soon, anyway.

Rarity nodded. "I agree," she said, sounding relieved. "I doubt Discord would want to violate his parole _this_ soon under any circumstances. So perhaps he's just staying with Pinkie somewhere until she wakes up."

"Uh, but if he can teleport, why would he be stuck somewhere? He could just take himself and Pinkie back to Ponyville," Spike pointed out.

"You said there's an easy way to find out, sugarcube?" Applejack asked Twilight.

"I can just scry for Discord," Twilight said confidently. "His Chaos magic shows up like a beacon. If he's anywhere in Equestria, I ought to be able to find him, and if he's not in Ponyville, odds are he's with Pinkie."

The scrying spell was one she'd used before, so thankfully she didn't need to look it up... without her books, she wouldn't have been able to. She concentrated, focused on the feel of Chaos, and fired up the spell.

There was no echo, no feeling of Chaos magic ghosting against her horn. There was no resonance anywhere. The Everfree pulsed erratically with chaos magic, but no more than normal; Discord wasn't hiding in there. And without Discord, they'd lost their best clue to Pinkie's location. It was too bad she couldn't scry for Pinkie directly...

...Wait! Maybe she could! "Girls, I want to try something," she said. "Gather around, and focus on your element."

"Are we going to try that summoning spell?" Applejack asked.

"No, it wouldn't work without all six of us, and I don't think the Rainbow Powers work exactly the same way the Elements did anyway. I have something else in mind. Focus on your element, and when you have it firmly in mind... reach out to Pinkie."

She felt the rainbow of magic building up inside each one of them, felt it pulse and grow. It wouldn't be a large enough pulse to cause a phaseshift; they wouldn't transform to their more garishly colored forms. But it should be powerful enough that she could focus and guide it out and let it lead them directly to their missing sixth.

Except, when she did, it fizzled completely.

"It didn't work," Rainbow Dash said, sounding nervous. "How come it didn't work? Is it something Discord did?"

"Or perhaps something left over from what Tirek did to us?" Rarity asked, sounding close to the edge of panic.

"Has... has something bad happened to Pinkie and Discord?" Fluttershy asked.

"I don't know," Twilight said, feeling lost. Why hadn't it worked? She'd felt the resonance, she'd felt it building. It should have worked.

"Well, I'm guessing it just plain didn't work somehow," Applejack said. "Because the only other explanation is that Pinkie and Discord ain't anywhere, and that don't make sense either."

"Wait!" Sudden excitement swept through Twilight. "Wait, that's it! I know exactly where they are!"

"Are they okay?" Fluttershy asked.

"Do tell us, Twilight!" Rarity urged.

"Well, okay, I don't _know_ exactly where they are, but I have a really good hypothesis. Princess Celestia told me, when she told me that Discord was under town arrest, that normally he lives in a pocket dimension of chaos that he made himself. But he's not allowed to live there anymore; he's not even allowed to go there without one of us. So he must have gone with Pinkie to get his stuff, because he's been ordered to move into Ponyville!"

"But why wouldn't you be able to find them, then?" Rainbow asked.

"Because they're not anywhere! Just like Applejack said. They're outside of this plane of existence, and that means the magic can't find them. If they're in a pocket dimension, then they're not strictly speaking inside our universe at all, exactly."

"Oh, that is such a relief," Rarity said. "I can picture it perfectly, too. If he was tired and wanted to retrieve his possessions before going to wherever he planned to stay the night, of course he would ask Pinkie, and then undoubtedly the two of them must have fallen asleep there because of the late hour. And without the sun or an alarm clock to wake her, and after all the excitement and the length of the party, Pinkie must simply have overslept! And certainly Discord wouldn't be responsible enough to even think about the fact that she'd like to wake up early and return here to clean up." She sighed happily. "It all makes perfect sense."

That phrase bothered Twilight. Things almost never made perfect sense around Discord. On the other hoof, it _was_ the best explanation. What else could it be? She felt certain Pinkie couldn't be dead; the resonance she felt from Laughter still felt Pinkie-shaped. And if she wasn't dead and she wasn't anywhere, then where else could she be but outside the universe?

"Well, if Pinkie's oversleepin' cause she went to help Discord, then it's plain to see we're gonna have to pick up the slack and clean up the party for her," Applejack said. "Can't say I mind it much; I never did feel right leaving Pinkie to do all the work cleaning up after, but she'd always say it was her job, bein' that she planned the party. Maybe we can do something nice for her this time, since she ain't around to tell us no."

"As long as all you ponies are helping out and nopony's leaving me stuck with the whole thing, I'm game for it," Spike said.

Rainbow Dash sighed. "I guess so. It's a nice thing to do for Pinkie, but I'm worried about what might've been going on with the weather while Tirek was taking all our magic. It wasn't like _he_ was trying to make any of the rain come out on schedule."

"Oh, but you're so fast, Rainbow, surely you can put some time in to help us and then go catch up with the weather later today? I'm sure the crops won't die if the rainfall comes a few hours late," Rarity said encouragingly.

"Don't even know as that we need rain right now," Applejack said. "Last I checked, the cisterns weren't low. So I'm pretty sure you've got time to pitch in."

"Fine," Rainbow said, sighing. "But only a few hours! I really do have to check up with the rest of the weather team!"

* * *

It was less than half an hour after they started cleaning up the castle from the party that Spike found Pinkie's note.

In large, blocky hoofwriting, written in glittery purple wax from what appeared to be a wide crayon, it said, "Me and Discord went to do something really really nice for Twilight but it's a surprise so I can't say what! See you tomorrow afternoon or something like that!" What followed was a rows of X's, O's, and smiley faces.

Twilight blinked as she read it over. Going to get Discord's stuff was not what she would call something really, really nice for _herself_. So she'd been right that Pinkie was with Discord, but possibly wrong about where they'd gone. Except, where else _could_ they have gone? Did Discord have some sort of present for her at his home in his pocket dimension? She cringed at the thought of what Pinkie and Discord might consider an appropriate present for her. Well, Pinkie's taste in presents was usually okay, but if Discord was in the mix, who knew what he could talk Pinkie into? She didn't think he'd do anything actively malicious, not right now, but he was still Discord.

"She could have put this somewhere that one of us would have seen it, instead of leaving it lying on the floor near an exterior door," Rarity complained. "I swear, after the _terrible_ fright she put us through, I most certainly intend to have some words with her."

"Yeah, but you know she didn't mean no harm by it," Applejack said. "And anyway, it'd be just like Discord to drag her off the moment her note's written without waitin' for her to actually put it someplace that makes sense."

"Well, I certainly intend to have words with him as well," Rarity said. "I was almost certainly awake when he and Pinkie left, and I believe Twilight was as well; perhaps if the goal was to arrange for a present for Twilight, I can see why they wouldn't have wanted to speak to her, but what could possibly have been the problem with telling me personally before they left?"

Rainbow looked uncomfortable, probably because she was placed in the position of either defending Discord at the same time as defending Pinkie, or failing to defend Pinkie. Apparently she came down on the side of friend defense. "I, uh, I gotta say, when Pinkie gets an idea in her head that she thinks is gonna make somepony happy... she doesn't normally think about stuff like checking in. I mean she forgot she had to do party cleanup. This idea of hers must've been a big one. She wouldn't forget party cleanup for just any old reason."

"I wonder what it is?" Fluttershy asked. "If Pinkie is involved, it must be something Twilight will really like, but with Discord involved... oh, it could be anything!"

"Which reminds me," Rarity said. "Twilight, once we finish the party cleanup, the four of us simply _must_ take you out shopping to replace your toiletries and kitchen supplies! And perhaps some furniture would not go amiss. Oh, but we'll have to put thought into what sorts of furniture would match the castle's décor! It can't be just anything. Perhaps we'll have to have custom-made furniture brought in! Or at least go shopping in Canterlot!"

Twilight put on a weary smile. "Thanks, Rarity, but... I'm not up to picking out furniture yet. I'm... still kind of reeling over what's gone. The food and the toiletries, yes, that's a good idea. Especially healthy food, because once Pinkie moves in, she's probably going to try to fill the pantries with party food." She sighed. "Spike, you and I ought to go out to what's left of the tree to try to recover your gem hoard... gems don't get destroyed by fire, so we might recover most of it. And maybe some of what was in the basement survived."

"Oh! I can help with that!" Rarity volunteered.

"That'd be great!" Spike sounded much more enthusiastic than Twilight felt. "And we kept some of my baby toys in a fireproof box, remember? 'Cause I kept setting them on fire?"

"Good point, we might be able to find those as well." At least maybe _some_ of the sentimental mementos of Spike's babyhood might have survived. And some of Twilight's own childhood memories were still at her parents' home, never having moved with her to either the School for Gifted Unicorns or Ponyville. But there was so much gone... all the _books_...

Well. There was no sense crying over it. Even though she really kind of wanted to.

* * *

By late afternoon, toiletries had been purchased, and the remains of the tree had been thoroughly searched. The gems Spike had kept stashed in the wall turned up, but none of the ones from the kitchen or from under his bed, nor did the fireproof box of baby toys. Tiny fragments of paper, too small to possibly piece back together into anything, floated on top of piles of ash, and all of them were completely covered with soot by the time the search was done. The things that had been in the basement hadn't blown up, but they'd ended up completely covered in dirt, buried when the roots of the tree caved in and brought the entire dirt ceiling of the basement down on top of everything that had been in there. This included Twilight's box of books that she'd originally planned on trading at Rainbow Falls; when she pulled them out of the dirt and brushed them off enough with her magic to confirm what they were, she almost cried, and only the need to keep her princess face on and be strong, particularly in front of Spike, stopped her. Some of her most precious books had survived. But so very, very few. The contrast between the happiness at finding them intact, if dirty, and the grief over all of the rest of them, gone, was making hay out of her equilibrium.

Pinkie and Discord had not reappeared. This was making Twilight very, very nervous.

The party had been cleaned up hours ago, the weather team had brought a brief shower to compensate for several days without Tirek bothering to bring rain or pegasi who still had magic feeling safe enough to do it themselves, and Twilight now had an assortment of towels, washcloths, blankets, kitchen supplies and soaps. Also, three different ponies had turned up at the castle asking for jobs as cooks or maids. She had to turn them down, for now, until she had time to discuss with Celestia where the funding for the Friendship Outreach was going to come from. And Ponyville residents had been wandering in with library books that they'd had checked out before Tirek's reign of terror, all day, returning them to her so she could at least record which ones survived.

Filthy Rich dropped off five boxes of donated books from his affiliated bookstores; while the Barnyard Bargains in Ponyville didn't sell any such thing, apparently the franchises in Manehattan, Canterlot, Fillydelphia and Baltimare had book sections. Admittedly they consisted almost entirely of mass-produced crappy best sellers from last year, beach thrillers and cheesy romances and the like, and there was a lot more duplication than she normally thought the Ponyville library could really support, but right now beggars couldn't be choosers. Several other ponies had delivered book donations as well. She felt so proud of her town, of her fellow ponies and how much they stood behind her. But the combination of happiness and pride twined around grief and loss was stretching her tighter and tighter, and her worries for Pinkie (and to a lesser extent for Discord) were putting enough pressure on her that she thought she would snap.

Her namesake had fallen upon Equestria, the last rays of Celestia's sun fading below the horizon and Luna's stars rising on the other side of the sky, and she was pacing anxiously. She shouldn't be so nervous, she knew. While Pinkie was punctual, Discord was not, and he was probably responsible for their transportation. She imagined Pinkie whining at Discord that it was time to go, and Discord laughing her off, claiming that keeping to a schedule was no fun. Pointing out that after all, she hadn't _promised_ to be back by afternoon. Wearing Pinkie down, because Pinkie did like to have fun. Sometimes Twilight thought Discord would have had more success in the long run if he'd seduced Pinkie to the chaos side of life than by discording her. Well, not literally seduced, she'd never seen Pinkie show an even slightly romantic interest in anypony until Cheese Sandwich came along. But he'd had her halfway to his side already with the chocolate rain, and then he'd ruined it by messing with her mind. She knew that Pinkie's feelings regarding Discord seemed to be wildly variable; sometimes she treated him like one of her best buddies, like she had when he'd gotten sick, and sometimes she did things like declaring that he wasn't her friend, although he also wasn't _not_ her friend.

What if he had done something to her? Pinkie was the only one who might be talked into helping Discord with one of his schemes, if she thought ponies would find it fun...

No. _No_, she couldn't believe it. She remembered the moment when Tirek had released all her other friends, and Discord, still trapped in his bubble, had turned away, slumped, his body language speaking silently of grief and resignation. He hadn't begged for his freedom, hadn't even tried to remind her of his existence... and according to Rarity, Discord had possibly saved all their lives by bargaining with Tirek, betting him, with their continued life as his stake in the game, that Tirek would need them as hostages to obtain Twilight's magic. But he'd said that Tirek wouldn't let him go one way or the other. If Twilight hadn't saved him, Discord would have been dragged off to a dungeon somewhere or thrown in Tartarus or something... but he'd said nothing.

Twilight thought a lot about pony body language, and tone of voice, and the meanings of what wasn't said, because she didn't instinctively understand it the way other ponies did. She'd suffered a good bit of pain in her childhood from being unable to tell what ponies thought of what she was doing or saying until it was too late; part of the reason she'd decided to forego friendship in favor of her studies was that ponies just didn't want to be her friend anyway, and while the teasing had stopped when she'd become Princess Celestia's personal student, few had bothered to reach out to her, and some of what she'd thought were attempts to reach out had turned out to be attempts to humiliate her, or get social status by pretending to be her friend. Now that she was an adult and had studied numerous works on pony psychology, she had learned to read ponies almost as well as those born with the ability could... she'd never match a Fluttershy or an Applejack or Rarity, but she thought she might be better at it than Rainbow Dash.

She could point to the exact things Discord had done, or said, or had failed to do or say, that made her think he was genuinely remorseful... and she _still_ felt her logic was sound. If he'd been a villain still, frightened by the loss of his power into pretending remorse... he'd have begged. Or ostentatiously failed to beg, in some way that drew him to her attention. Discord was almost never silent, almost never missed an opportunity to insert himself into pretty much any discourse possible. The fact that he'd been silent spoke volumes that no words of apology could ever match. He was unpredictable, but she found it impossible to believe that he'd betray them again this soon, not after the genuine sorrow and guilt she'd seen in him yesterday.

But what could be keeping them?

And then, as if summoned by Twilight's fears for her, Pinkie bounded in.

"Twilight! Twilight Twilight Twilight! Come on, come on! You have to see this!"

"_PINKIE!_" Twilight grabbed the bouncing pink pony in her magic, pulled her close, and gave her a hug. "I was so worried!"

"Worried? Oh my gosh did you not get my note? I _knew_ I should hung it on the fridge!"

"No, we got your note, but it said you'd be back this afternoon!"

"What time is it? Oh no, did we come back next month? Or a year? Please tell me we weren't gone for a year!" She grabbed Twilight's face in both hooves and pulled her close, eyes wide.

"Um, no, you've only been gone a day."

Pinkie relaxed. "Whew, what a relief! So why were you worried, silly filly? I said afternoon or something like that, and evening is something like afternoon!"

"Yeah, but you went somewhere with _Discord._ Of course we were worried. I have to go tell everypony you're back and safe!"

"No, you have to see your present first! I don't know how much longer Discord can stay awake!"

Twilight frowned. "Why does Discord need to stay awake?"

"Because! When you work super-duper hard to make somepony a present, you don't want to be asleep when they get it!"

A present. From Discord. Twilight sighed. "Spike, please go get Rarity. Owlowliscious, can you get Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy? I'll write a note to have Rainbow get Applejack-"

"Twilight, we have to _go!_ Come on! I'll let all our friends know later but this is for you!"

"How about they meet us?" Twilight offered, not particularly enamored of the prospect of facing whatever Discord thought was an appropriate present without the backup of as many friends as she could get.

"Okay! We'll be out near Fluttershy's house!"

"Near?" There wasn't much near Fluttershy's, aside from the Everfree.

"Well, that's where the present is!"

By now Twilight was curious, though she still had serious misgivings. What exactly would _Discord_ consider an appropriate gift? Well, the flowers he'd given Princess Celestia had been tasteful (literally, so she'd heard), if perhaps a trifle forward, given that half the gossip columnists in Canterlot were now speculating on a romantic involvement between the two. But he could hardly have worked hard on _flowers._ She had a hard time imagining what Discord could possibly work hard on, or what in fact constituted him working hard.

She followed Pinkie out, with Spike and Owlowliscious dispatched to summon their friends. As soon as they were outside, Pinkie broke into a full-out gallop. "Hurry, hurry!" Twilight had to fly to keep up with her, given the dangers of letting Ponyville citizens see a princess galloping... that would probably start a panic. Whereas Pinkie galloping was just Pinkie being Pinkie.

They headed out of town, in the direction of Fluttershy's house, then veered off in the direction of the land between Sweet Apple Acres and Fluttershy's property. As Pinkie slowed down, Twilight looked at what was up ahead, puzzled. That was a very large oak tree. Had she really never come this way before? She felt sure she'd never seen that tree before, but it was much too big and well rooted to be a transplant.

As they got close, she could see that it was a treehouse, similar to Fluttershy's or the one she'd lost. Nothing hung from the branches, suggesting that it was unoccupied; ponies tended to decorate their tree houses. She'd been _quite_ sure there were no unoccupied tree homes in Ponyville, certainly none of this size. Well, that gave her a clue as to what this was about. She smiled wanly. _Her_ tree was dead, no new tree could ever replace it, and she had a lovely new place to live; she didn't need a new tree. But it had certainly been thoughtful of Discord to make it for her, at least, if that was what this was.

The sight of Discord sprawled on the ground in front of the door seemed to verify her belief. She landed neatly beside him. "You guys grew me a new tree? That's really nice!" she said, wearing her princess face. She really _was_ pleased they'd thought of her, even if what they'd come up with was kind of useless. Well, Ponyville could use a new library, anyway; the Friendship Palace wasn't an appropriately cozy place for reading like the Golden Oaks library had been.

"Uh-uh!" Pinkie said, shaking her head. "Well, we _did_, or to be _totally_ exact Discord did, but that's not the really important thing!"

"Oh, my head," Discord moaned. "Pinkie, can I have a new head?"

"I dunno, can you concentrate enough to make one?"

"Chaos, no. I couldn't conjure orange juice right now."

"Then nope! Can't have a new head!"

"Maybe Twilight would make me a new head?" he asked plaintively, raising the offending organ to look at Twilight with improbably large eyes.

"Sorry, I can't make new heads," Twilight said. "Did you guys really grow me a new tree, or did you just snap it up?"

"It's a real tree," Discord said, his voice hoarse and weak, with a distinct whine in it, but steady. "Made from a real acorn and everything. It might be a little twisty in some places inside and of course I couldn't make it grow exactly like your original tree and I do apologize, Chaos magic doesn't do anything _perfectly_, but it is 100% real tree, even though I wanted to put in glass and stone but I decided against it. And I didn't make the tree sap into soda pop even though I wanted to."

"We couldn't agree on what flavor soda pop!" Pinkie said. "Discord thought root beer, and I said, 'Root beer? Are you crazy?' So it's just all normal tree stuff!" She hopped over Discord. "Come in, Twilight, come in! Come see!"

Twilight flew over Discord, who looked entirely too wrecked to move from where he was flopped on the ground. There were visible bags under his eyes, which were badly bloodshot to the point where she couldn't make out his tiny pupil in the web of red blood vessels covering his eye, and his large pupil was looking like a spider. She didn't think it would take him so much effort just to grow a tree; had the Rainbow Power failed to give him back most of the chaos power Tirek took? "Okay, Pinkie, I'll have a look at... oh my..."

All over the inside of the treehouse, stacked in wobbly, disorganized piles on the oak floor, were books. Hundreds of books. Maybe thousands. Twilight staggered slightly, staring around herself. "What..."

"I can't guarantee all the copies are perfect," Discord said anxiously. "In fact I know they aren't. There are probably a lot with a few pages missing, or with some pages rearranged, and one came out tasting like bacon, I do apologize. But I tried, I did my best-"

"He really did! He had to super concentrate because chaos doesn't like making copies, so it was really really hard for him, like trying to do the Cakes' taxes! I checked a lot of them but I couldn't check them all and I couldn't check every single page but we did our best, I promise!"

"How- how did you-"

"Time travel," Discord said, dragging himself partway into the treehouse, head and neck coming over the threshold and then flopping there.

"But... you can't go back long enough to do something like this! You can only go back like a week, or with your level of power maybe a month, and you can only stay for a few minutes!"

"Those are rules, Twilight," Discord said, his voice a little stronger. "My magic can't easily make copies, but there's nothing it does so well as break rules. In fact I dare say I could never have managed to make _any_ copies with any level of accuracy if I weren't flagrantly violating causality while I was doing it." He put a paw over his eyes. "Pinkie, be a dear and ask Luna to turn down the moon for me?"

"I think the lamps are probably a bigger problem," Pinkie said. For the first time Twilight noticed that the light in the room was coming from Fluttershy-shaped sconces on the wall, depicting Fluttershy smiling and playing with a large ball, where the ball was a globe of light. "Lamps! Can you turn down a little bit?"

"They only speak Prench," Discord said apologetically.

"So how do you say it in Prench?"

"I forget. My head _really_ hurts."

"You... copied... all these?"

"Not all of the things! On the first run we went back to right after Spike left the library, to get the stuff that isn't books!" Pinkie hopped over to an area Twilight hadn't noticed before. As if in a dream, Twilight drifted over to join her. "We knew if you went in the library before Tirek blew it up you would notice missing books, and that would make a paradox or something, which is bad, but we figured you didn't have time to go upstairs to your bedroom and check out stuff, so we cleaned out your closet and took all your personal stuff and Spike's, too!"

Her dresses, from the Gala, the wedding, the coronation, all lying in a pile on the floor, unharmed. Spike's baby bed. Spike's actual, current bed. The fireproof box of baby toys that they hadn't found. The books she'd been reading when the crisis came up, that she'd thought she would never finish. "My stuff..."

"And the kitchen too! We didn't have time to take all the stuff in the fridge or _all_ the pantry stuff but we got the spice rack and Spike's dragon tea and his gems and a box of cookies! And then we went in the book sorting room, where you sort the books that ponies return, because we figure you wouldn't have gone in there either, and we took all the books there!" Pinkie pointed dramatically at a pile of about 50 books, not even stacked, and any other day Twilight would have been incensed at the treatment of her books but she'd thought they were _gone_ and there they were. "And then we took the magic books from the top shelf, the ones you keep up high where foals can't get them, which was a little risky because maybe you'd notice that, so Discord put up an illusion so you wouldn't notice they were gone. Then we dropped off all the stuff here and went back to when you and Spike were at the Equestria Games because we knew you wouldn't be in the library then!"

"We assumed you'd notice any missing books," Discord said tiredly. "And I thought you might not appreciate it if I broke the space-time continuum with a paradox, even to save your books." He grinned, though it was a weak shadow of his usual broad smile. "So I copied them. I apologize if some are missing pages or they sing or they're in foreign languages but I did try as hard as I could..."

"We had to go back over and over, 'cause you can only stay in one time so long even if you're doing it with chaos and you can only overlap yourself once, so if we did a time and we ran out of it then we couldn't do that time again, and we've been doing it for like... three days? Four?"

"Don't ask me, I can't count even when my head isn't about to explode."

"And we didn't even sleep!" This, Twilight thought, might explain why Pinkie was even more manic and loud than usual. "But by the end Discord couldn't drink any more coffee and when I tried to give him a pastry he almost threw up and we didn't want _that-"_

"_Please_ do not mention food..." Discord moaned.

"And I was keeping the checklist of all the copies 'cause we also took the card catalog, not the drawers, just the cards, so I drew smiley faces on all the ones we copied, see?" Pinkie displayed her handiwork. There were indeed smiley faces on all the cards Twilight could see. "So finally we had all the cards with smiley faces, or balloons, I put balloons on the ones we took the real book of, and some of them are stamped that they were out so obviously we weren't going to copy them, but it was lots and lots and lots of books and it didn't matter how many times I did dominoes with the books and then knocked them all over or made jello and then dumped it on his head, it wasn't chaosy enough to make up for making copies and poor Discord was getting sicker and sicker but I said it would be okay if we just got most of the books, and he said, he said you saved his life and if his life is worth anything it's worth doing the job right for you and he made me Pinkie Promise not to let him stop until it was done, which was hard because I am running out of coffee, and chocolate, Discord stopped being able to do chocolate milk yesterday and I _really need_ chocolate, and meringue, and maybe a ton of pecan snowball cookies, but it's okay because now we're done and we copied them all!" Pinkie took a deep breath, having delivered that entire monologue without apparently drawing one.

"I really tried," Discord said. "I know a lot of the copies are going to have problems and I tried to fix it, I did, but chaos just can't _do_ that, but if I'm the master of chaos then I should be able to make chaos do what it can't do because that doesn't make any sense, so I made it. But a lot of them are wrong. I'm sorry, I really tried, I'm sorry..."

Discord apologizing once again for not perfectly copying the books that were supposed to be lost forever, _had_ been lost forever except that he'd set out to do something as impossible for him as applebucking had been for Pinkie and dressmaking had been for Applejack, and _done_ it despite it causing him physical pain and illness, and now her books that were lost forever were back and she'd never thought for a moment this could happen and it had... It was the last straw, the final bit of emotional turmoil, and she broke. Twilight's knees folded out from under her and she collapsed to the floor. A wail escaped her throat as she put her forehooves to her face, still kneeling on her back legs but almost flat on the floor, too overwhelmed to get up.

"Oh no!" Pinkie knelt down next to her. "Twilight, I'm sorry, we thought you'd be happy! What's wrong, please? We tried so hard because we thought you'd be happy-"

"I _am_ happy!" Twilight sobbed. "I _am_... I'm happy..."

"Oh, boy," she heard Spike's voice. "I haven't seen this in a while." She felt his small claws on the back of her neck, stroking her mane. "It's okay, Twi, it's okay. Let it all out. It's gonna be okay."

"I shouldn't be crying when I'm happy!" Twilight cried, her vision now blurred with tears. "I _shouldn't_! I'm, I'm happy, I'm so happy, I'm so stupid to be crying like this..."

"It's okay." His hand released her. "Can anypony get Twilight a drink?"

Even through the blur, she saw Discord raise his talon, slightly, then let it flop to the floor again without snapping. "Not it," he said in an exhausted tone.

"Don't worry, I got this!" Pinkie presented her with a tall glass of lemonade. Twilight tried not to think about how impossible that was, and drank it, using it to fight down the sobs.

"Oh my dear. You're so overwhelmed. I understand. I daresay, I would have fainted, darling." She felt Rarity next to her, and then a quick hug.

"She's not sad?" Pinkie asked. "I don't want her to be sad! We tried so hard-"

"No, no, Pinkie, she's not sad," Rarity said. "Simply overwhelmed."

"This used to happen to her all the time," Spike said. "She couldn't handle it when she had strong emotions changing really fast, mostly from sad or angry to happy or relieved; she'd just fold over and start crying."

Twilight lifted her head, slightly ashamed that her friends had seen her like this. She'd thought she'd outgrown this reaction. "Rarity? Spike? When did you get here?" she asked, her voice hoarse.

"Right at the tail end, my dear. When Pinkie was talking about the card catalogue. Your eyes were a bit glazed by then, so I'm not surprised you didn't notice." She got up from beside Twilight. "Oh, Spike, look! Your gem hoard!"

"Oh, wow!" Twilight looked over at Spike, who had gone from competent and assured assistant to kid in a candy store. "And my _comic books!_ You guys found my comic books!"

"Yeah, they were with your stuff! Which is good because if they'd been in the library we'd have had to make copies and that could have turned weird!"

"No, these are _my_ collection, they're not part of the circulating collection. I don't let anypony read them unless they're my friends and I don't let anypony take them out of the library at all."

"Hoarding comics," Discord said, his voice so hoarse it was cracked. "Could be worse, I suppose. He could be hoarding Hummel figurines, or postage stamps."

"And you got my old toys... Thank you!" He grabbed Pinkie in a hug and squeezed her hard enough to lift her off the ground, despite the size difference between the two of them. "You're the best, Pinkie!"

"Oh, thanks, it was no problem!" Pinkie said, grinning. "But thank Discord too, the whole thing was his idea!"

Discord held up a paw, looking slightly alarmed. "No hugs."

Spike grinned mischievously, and then grabbed Discord around the neck and hugged him anyway. "You saved my stuff, you're getting a hug, dude."

"Can I die now?" Discord groaned. "I promise to resurrect myself. Eventually. After I've grown a new head. I think I wore a hole in this one."

"Nuh-uh, you have to go to bed!"

"I'll just sleep right here."

"No you won't! 'Cause Twilight's gonna want to be all organizy with the books and you are way too low on vitamin chaos to be here for that so I am taking you home! And feeding you like ten glasses of water because I don't even think you had anything to drink all day!"

"Oh my," Fluttershy's voice came. Twilight turned her head to see the yellow pegasus in the doorway. "Discord, what happened to you?"

"He copied all of Twilight's books in the past and brought them here for her so she could have them without making a tympanic paradox!"

"That is temporal paradox," Discord said. "Tympanic paradox is how you have not rendered yourself deaf with all the shouting you do. Oh, my head. Fluttershy?"

"Um, yes?"

"I didn't get you a present yet. I'm sorry," Discord said. "I wanted to get you a present but now I don't know what to get because Twilight saved my life, but you saved my soul, and I wanted to tell you how sorry I am but I don't know how I can beat going back in time and copying six thousand books..."

"Oh my," Fluttershy said again.

"Pinkie, dear, I think Discord is becoming just a little bit delirious from exhaustion," Rarity said. "Where is he staying?"

"With us! In the Palace! I found him a room right near the door where the garden's going to be!"

That broke Twilight out of her stupor. "Wait, _what?_"

"Isn't it a great idea?" Pinkie said, beaming. "Now if I get bored and lonely and you wanna be left alone I won't bother you!"

Twilight's mouth opened and closed, silently, more than once, at the implication that Pinkie genuinely thought having _Discord_ as a housemate was a good idea. Although... it might not be a terrible idea to keep an eye on him. And while now that Rarity had pointed it out, she realized that his anxiety and guilt were probably only showing this strongly because of how exhausted he was, that didn't mean his feelings weren't genuine... it just meant that hopefully after he'd gotten some sleep he'd stop apologizing for stupid things like not being able to use the magic of making things different to make identical things.

Pinkie slung Discord over her back like a rolled-up rug, then picked up his head and somehow managed to wind his neck around hers as if he were a scarf, so his head was now lying on her back and not dangling on the ground. Having experienced how heavy Discord was when he wasn't using magic to lighten himself, Twilight was impressed; Pinkie was an earth pony, they were strong, but she herself had been an alicorn when Discord had been clinging to her after they'd all encountered the tatzlwurm, and alicorns had earth pony strength also. Discord made faces to express his distaste for this treatment, but didn't verbally protest or physically resist.

"Goodbye, everypony!" Pinkie said. "I'm taking Discord back to the Palace to get some sleep, and then either I will go zzzz myself or I will bake a coconut meringue layer cake and eat the whole thing, one or the other! Twilight, enjoy your books! Spike, enjoy your comics! Fluttershy, enjoy having a new tree in the neighborhood! Rarity, enjoy that we didn't let the dresses you made go explody! Applejack and Dashie, enjoy getting the explanation you were gonna ask me for about why I am carrying Discord on my back and where the tree came from, 'cause now Twilight can tell you! Bye!"

She started to bound off, prompting a shriek from Discord. "Ahh! Pinkie, no bouncing, _please!_"

"Oh, okay, sorry!" This time she left at a sedate trot, which was probably still too jarring for Discord's comfort, judging from his face.

Twilight got to her feet, noting that Applejack and Rainbow Dash were, in fact, standing near the door, right behind where Pinkie had been working to sling Discord onto her back. "Well? What's going on?" Rainbow Dash asked. "Where did it turn out they were?"

"This is going to take a bit of explanation..."

* * *

_For updates and notes about my work, visit my Livejournal at alara-r dot livejournal dot com. (Fanfiction dot net strips links, so I have to write it out like that.)_

_Support my writing and see sneak previews, incompletes, outlines and working notes! Maybe even vote on what I write next, or get me to write you a fic. See my account at www dot dot com slash alarajrogers._


	3. You Cannot Go Against Nature

So I've been thinking, if your nature is to constantly change, can you change your nature?

There's a poem I picked up somewhere, I forget where, that goes:

"You cannot go against nature  
Because when you do  
Go against nature  
That's part of nature too"

So I'm up against a contradiction, which are normally enormous fun, but... not today. The question is, if what you are is the engine of change, can you turn that on yourself to cease to be the engine of change, and if you do, does that create a paradox? Also, realistically speaking, what are the consequences?

I can't believe I care about consequences. Maybe I have changed.

I don't want to do it anymore. I want to give it up. I want to have what "normal" creatures have in their lives, at least to the extent of the basic consistency of their own selves so they know that barring magical interference they aren't going to sell out their friends. But I hate myself for wanting this because I promised myself millennia ago I would never be ashamed of who I am and I would never let anything make me want to be "normal", because normal is boring and boring is the worst possible thing in the universe. Except that I've just found out there are worse fates. It's not exactly boring to be a traitor who nearly gets your closest friends killed (and who, let's not forget, stands around and does nothing while the first being you ever loved and a being who helped take care of you when you were sick and never did you any harm and a being who hates you _now_ but used to look up to you as a big brother... all get thrown into Tartarus. Why, that's not boring at all. It's just completely reprehensible.)

Am I allowed to get tired of it? Why do I have no sacred principles except the principle of "never give up chaos"? I mean, if I really had no sacred principles, then giving up chaos would be an option, wouldn't it? And if I'm going to have one sacred principle, then why not two, or several? And if I hate myself for betraying my one sacred principle, but I hate myself for who I am if I don't, well...

Now I _really_ regret blowing up my thinking tree.

I wonder sometimes if this is the end. Chaos avatars are immortal and yet every past one of them died or had _something_ happen to them, because otherwise I wouldn't be here. I never put a lot of thought before into the contradiction of being the heir to a position that makes you immortal. If chaos avatars don't die of old age and are incredibly hard to kill, what happened to the ones before me?

Well, I actually know what happened to most of them. Mayhem: Luna's mom killed him (technically Celestia's mom too but I always think of her as Luna's mom for some reason.) Which I strongly suspect was suicide-by-pony, given what I know about his last few years and what he did. Ar: may actually still be alive, for moderate values of "life". Dragons don't commit suicide, they just go to sleep. Forever, maybe. Pan: went worldwalking, never came back. Set: got possessed by Apep, killed the lover he'd spent centuries protecting, and... no idea what happened to him after that but given that he's not still around I suspect someone killed him. And he probably let it happen, if he managed to wrestle any control back from Apep (who I strongly suspect is responsible for Nightmare Moon as well, though to be fair, pretty sure neither I nor Sombra helped matters.) Completely unaware of what happened to Eris or Loki, mostly because up until now I didn't really care. If there were any before that, I'm not sure.

None of them lasted over two millennia. Congratulations, Discord, you're the first Chaos avatar to make it this far! Yay! I should tell Pinkie, have a party. Is there a prize? What do I win?

I am starting to think I've lasted this long only because of the millennium-plus as a garden gnome.

If the essence of chaos is change, then chaos must change, but if you change who you are so you're not chaos, then you can't really represent chaos anymore. So you do something stupid, and you die. Or you more or less kill yourself, even if you use proxies to do it. And then some other poor schmuck gets the job.

But I don't want someone else to get the job because quite frankly Chaos avatars are little shits and we could end up with another Mayhem. Or Ar. I'm the only one I trust with this, but since I don't trust myself anymore...

...this is wrong, this is all wrong, I'm not supposed to be like this. I'm not supposed to be thinking this way. Doing something chaotic and stupid is what I _do_, I shouldn't want to give up my powers or my life because I betrayed someone. Chaos has no loyalty. I used to want to be loyal but I gave it up for Chaos because Chaos is where my first loyalty has always been, but then logically speaking because Chaos has no loyalty that should mean I can betray it if I feel like it, right? But I'm not supposed to _want_ to. But when have I ever cared what I'm supposed to do?

Ar wanted to save the world from what she thought was the worst thing ever, and instead she set it on fire and made matters infinitely worse for a lot of the ones she wanted to protect.

Set tried for centuries to protect Ra from Apep and ended up being the one that killed him.

On the other hand Mayhem had no loyalty to anyone or anything until he got us all killed, when all of a sudden he remembered he was a draconequus and wow, did that stunt ever backfire or what? At which point he killed himself. Well, came up with an enormously stupid plan to destroy all the ponies in Equestria with a volcanic eruption combined with an inland hurricane, which led to him getting killed, but I'm pretty sure it's the same thing.

So I guess the moral of the story is, don't be loyal to anything if you're a Chaos avatar, and if there's something you're actually loyal to that you don't recognize, you'll end up destroying it and wanting to die, but hey, the same thing will happen to you if you do recognize your loyalties, so the point is, don't be loyal to anything. Or viewed from another perspective, Fluttershy's killed me by making me want to have friends. Except I can't even hate her for that, because I actually do want friends. Maybe I was better off not knowing what it felt like, because I didn't know what I was missing, but now that I do know...

I don't want to live if I have to be alone and loyal to no one and care about no one and have no one care about me, for the rest of my life, ever again. I don't want to live that way. Chaos isn't worth it. Nothing's worth it.

But because of what I am, I'm going to destroy anything I care about sooner or later. As demonstrated by the fact that I just almost did.

...I need them to stop me. I need them to make it so I can't hurt them, without passing on the mantle of Chaos to someone else. Can't keep living like this, it'll break me and I'll change and I'll do something awful because I can't stand being like this anymore and maybe I won't even care by then. Can't lose my powers, they'll go to someone else. Can't die, they'll go to someone else. Can't become something else... that's the same thing as giving it up, they'll go to someone else. Can't get the Tree to turn me to stone.

I need to make my friends do it instead.

* * *

_Note: The "poem" is actually part of the song "No New Tale to Tell" by Love and Rockets. Ar was the goddess of Chaos from "In Conquest Born" by C. S. Friedman. The other Chaos avatars all come from mythology except for Mayhem, who is mine._

_For updates and notes about my work, visit my Livejournal at alara-r dot livejournal dot com. (Fanfiction dot net strips links, so I have to write it out like that.)_

_Support my writing and see sneak previews, incompletes, outlines and working notes! Maybe even vote on what I write next, or get me to write you a fic. See my account at www dot dot com slash alarajrogers._


	4. The Cracks Begin To Show

Discord's head felt like cotton – not cotton candy, unfortunately, which might have had some pleasant aspects to it, but the ordinary stuff. There were pillows underneath him, and an unexpected weight on his back, heavier than a blanket, and warmer. He'd woken up after enough drug-fueled orgies, back in the days when he'd unruled Equestria, to know what it felt like to wake up with a random pony on top of him, or two, or six, but since he was fairly certain he hadn't done anything nearly so fun anytime recently, the sensation surprised him.

Carefully, because the cotton in his head seemed to have changed to gun cotton the moment he moved and now his head felt like it might explode, he craned his neck back to see why it felt like a pony was lying on top of him, and saw something very pink. Memory began to trickle back, of collapsing on the cold, crystalline floor of the room that had been chosen for him, of waking up repeatedly despite his exhaustion with nightmares of turning to stone and numbness in whatever part of his body he'd been lying on, of Pinkie coming in and him saying something delirious and incoherent with exhaustion about not wanting to be stone. And then he remembered her picking him up and dropping him on a pile of pillows, and then nothing.

"Pinkie?" he said hoarsely.

She opened one bleary blue eye. "Hi, Discord," she said, sounding much less cheerfully energetic than she usually did. "Did you stop having bad dreams or was I just too asleep to notice you waking up?"

"I don't remember any. Why are you lying on me?"

"'Cause I gave you all my pillows 'cause you were having nightmares about turning to stone and I thought well the floor is cold and hard and maybe that's why so I brought you in all the pillows I could find but you're very big and I couldn't take anypony else's pillows, and Twilight hasn't gotten mattresses or beds yet, so I gave you all my pillows and then I didn't have any and then I thought, Discord has really fluffy fur in his middle! He might make a good pillow! So I tried it but I forgot how big you are and I was getting a crick in my neck from trying to lean my head on you but then I thought what if you were a body pillow? So I climbed on top of you and you were so warm and fluffy I fell asleep even though I kicked my blankets off and it's chilly in here."

"Ah." He nodded his head sagely. "I was a convenient substitute for a mattress, in other words?"

"Mostly but mattresses aren't this fluffy. When you were pretending to have blue flu you weren't so fluffy! And then when you got the green pox I couldn't sleep on you anyway so I have no idea if you were fluffy or not." She wrapped her hooves around him and nuzzled her head against the fur of his midsection. "Sooo fluffy..."

"Well, the last time I took a shower I used Celestia's mane conditioner. Although quite a few things have happened since then. Like Tirek taking my powers, and the two of us nearly destroying the space-time continuum. So I'm not really sure why I'd be any fluffier than usual."

"Maybe you're always this fluffy and I just never noticed," Pinkie said dreamily. "I could sleep on you for a week."

"Since I'm getting up, you may need to find a way to solve gravity if you want to do that."

"You could fix gravity so I stay on you."

"Yes, but it would be much funnier to see what you come up with." He levitated Pinkie off his back and plopped her onto the pillows.

"Aww. These aren't warm! And they're fluffy pillows but they're not _furry_ fluffy pillows."

He considered conjuring her a lifesize plushie replica of himself, but between the headache that still hadn't gone fully away and the harmonics of the castle, he didn't think he had the strength. "I'm so very sorry, my dear. I know that sleeping on top of me must have been one of the most delightful experiences of your life, due to my magnificent fur texture, wonderful scent and all-around perfection, but I'm too hungry to continue to play the role of your mattress. Perhaps if you cause enough chaos for me today, I may consider letting you use me as a body pillow again tonight."

"Okie dokie lokie!" Pinkie got to her hooves, wobbling. "Let's go have pancakes!"

"I thought you wanted to sleep."

"But you're hungry! Which reminds me that I'm hungry! Which reminds me that Twilight will be hungry, and Spike! Which tells me I should make pancakes!"

"Well, who am I to turn down pancakes? Lead the way, o Minister of Parties!"

* * *

Spike was already making waffles.

"Welcome back to the land of the living!" he said. "Boy, when you sleep, you really sleep, don't you? I was starting to wonder if you were going to sleep for a hundred years or something like an adult dragon!"

"Was _I_ asleep a long long time too?" Pinkie asked.

"No, I think you crashed out like twelve hours ago or something, but Discord's been down for more than two days."

"That's hardly a hundred years," Discord said. "And draconequui are not dragons."

"Well, yeah, obviously, but you've got dragon in your name so you must be _sort_ of like dragons."

"Ooh! Are those blueberries? Are you making fresh blueberry waffles? I hope you're making a lot because I am super hungry! Can I help?"

"Uh, sure, if you mix the batter I can keep pouring it on the waffle iron and making more waffles and _Discord_ that pile is for everypony and also me, not just you!"

"I wasn't going to eat _all_ of them," Discord complained. "Just most of them."

"You can have two. And then every time I make four you can have one of them."

Discord made a face. "Ugh, I have to do math to get breakfast?"

"You can just snap up your own breakfast, can't you?"

He couldn't. Snapping up two bouquets of flowers had taken a good bit out of him, if he recalled correctly. After how heavily he'd exerted his powers in ways they were not designed for, he was quite certain that even two days of sleep hadn't gotten him back to a place where he was strong enough to resist the harmonics. If he stepped outside, he could do it, but if he stepped outside, he might be advertising his weakness. "Yes, but I want to eat _yours._ The breakfast you made, I mean, not the breakfast you intend to eat, that would be the _height_ of rudeness and now that I am fully and completely reformed, I would never be so rude to a _friend._"

Spike sighed. "You rescued my comic books. And my old toys. I guess I owe you more than a few waffles. No, Pinkie! Get away from the coffee pot!"

"But I could get so much more done," Pinkie wheedled.

"Why are you not allowing Pinkie to drink coffee?"

"Do you have any _idea_ what Pinkie does when she drinks coffee? She turns into like a whirlwind maniac!"

"That only happened one time," Pinkie said.

Discord pulled a mug out of the shining crystalline cabinet with telekinesis, and poured coffee into it with his tail. So his telekinesis worked, but was drastically weaker than it ought to be. He was probably at the level of a unicorn like Rarity. "So what you're telling me," he said as he mixed enough sugar and cream to turn the coffee into coffee-flavored cream sludge, "is that when Pinkie drinks coffee, she causes total chaos?"

"Not _total_," Pinkie said.

"Yeah," Spike said. "That's exactly the prob—" He caught what was going on a split second too late, spinning around just in time to watch Pinkie's hoof take the coffee mug from Discord's tail as Discord passed it to her. "No!"

He belched flame at the coffee mug, but Discord slid Pinkie sideways with his telekinesis, freeing her to quickly gulp the coffee'd sugar. Discord grinned.

"Why did you do that? You're supposed to be reformed!" Spike shouted.

"Of course I'm reformed. How could you even question that, after I rescued your comic books for you?" Discord said, putting on an ostentatious hurt expression. "My dear little friend Pinkie wanted some coffee, so I poured her a cup. Isn't friendship all about doing favors for your friends and giving them what they want when you can?"

"That's right!" Pinkie said. "That's why friendship is all about _MAKING TONS OF BREAKFAST FOR EVERYPONY!_"

"Oh no," Spike said.

"Step aside, Spike! Let me show you how a _real_ master of the craft of baking does it!"

Discord sat on the floor, well out of Pinkie's way, and munched on blueberry waffles as in short order Pinkie covered the entire kitchen with flour, sugar, batter, blueberries, bananas, cherries, peanut butter, cream, milk, half-cooked pancake bits, eggshells, eggs, vanilla extract, chocolate chips, hay, and dandelions, most of which she pulled out of her mane. Spike just moaned, paws covering his eyes, for most of the event, though he didn't refrain from munching on waffles himself.

The truth was that as much of a mess as Pinkie was making, she wasn't being truly chaotic. She was actually moving with hyper-efficiency, doing things like flipping pancakes in the air and while they were still in the air, slicing a banana with impossible speed and tossing it into the frying pan for the pancakes to land on and cook into themselves. It wasn't pure chaos, but it was complex enough and impossible enough that it was entertaining to watch, and a mess was always fun.

Especially when Twilight Sparkle, with bed head, stumbled into the room. "What – what is going on? _Pinkie!_ What are you doing to _my KITCHEN?!_"

"I'm making pancakes!" Pinkie chirped. "Also waffles, scrambled eggs, hay bacon, and cherry pastries!"

"...Somepony gave you my coffee, didn't they."

"Nope!"

"Then what—"

"Some_draconequus_ gave me coffee!"

"In my defense," Discord said, "I was promised that she would turn chaotic if I gave her coffee. I am somewhat disappointed. Though I got pancakes out of it, so it wasn't completely pointless."

"Aren't you supposed to be reformed?" Twilight asked, glaring.

"I am completely reformed! I even refilled the coffee pot. And paid attention to Spike's instructions on proper coffee making!" This called for a halo over his head. If only he had the strength to do it.

"He did," Spike admitted. "I tasted the coffee myself, it's great."

"Get me some please," Twilight said. "I am going outside. To enjoy the fresh air. That is not covered in pancake batter."

"That sounds like a splendid idea! I'll join you."

"Me too! Pinkie isn't even letting me help anymore," Spike said, handing Twilight a full coffee mug.

"Me too after I'm done cooking all the breakfast things! And then after breakfast I will clean up the kitchen for you! And everywhere else! I bet a shiny crystal castle like this needs a lot of dusting!"

Twilight tromped off, the various plates of already cooked breakfast foods held in her telekinetic field. Discord followed her, eager to get out of the castle's harmonics and test to make sure his powers were working properly. Quite aside from all the other reasons he had to want his powers back at full strength, if he remained this weak even after leaving the castle, he'd actually have to use a bathroom. He was somewhat surprised that that hadn't happened already, given his dim memories of Pinkie forcing him to wake up so she could pour apple juice down his throat.

Outside, Twilight stuffed her face with three waffles and an egg, and finished a second cup of coffee, while Discord confirmed silently to himself that his entire problem had been the castle and that his two days' worth of sleep had fully restored him otherwise. Spike ate the rest of the eggs.

"Spike, my boy," Discord said. "How would you like to undertake a culinary adventure?"

"If anypony but you was asking, I'd probably like it fine," Spike said. "But with you..."

"My dear child, I keep telling you, I'm reformed!" He snapped up a plate full of actual bacon. "If you're going to eat so many eggs, you should eat them the way the creators intended them to be eaten."

Spike's eyes went wide. "What is that and why does it smell so good?"

"Ugh," Twilight said, staring at the juicy strips. "I saw this when I was looking through the library in the other world, while you were sleeping. That's _bacon!_"

"Indeed it is. A keen eye you have, Princess!"

Twilight looked up at him. "Discord... for there to be bacon, there needs to be a _dead pig._"

"Not for me! I assure you, Twilight, this bacon is a pure construct of chaos, albeit a deliciously edible one. No pigs died to provide this repast, I assure you." He picked up a piece of bacon and ate it. The salt and fats were just what he needed after what he'd done to his head, working with Pinkie. "Why don't you try some, Twilight? Did you know that alicorns are actually omnivores? You can get by without eating meat as long as you eat your eggs and cheese and beans, just as I do most of the time, but a small quantity of meat in your diet is actually good for you." He turned to Spike. "And dragons, I'm sure you know, are _obligate_ omnivores. You wouldn't need to eat quite so many gems if you ate some meat."

"But I love gems."

"Of course you do, and I'm sure you also love ice cream, but eating nothing but ice cream won't actually satisfy your nutritional needs."

"Well, it smells good..." Spike picked up a bacon strip. "Do you Pinkie Promise that this isn't from a dead pig?"

"Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a pancake in my eye." He picked up a pancake and stuffed it into his eyeball, which grew teeth and ate it.

"Dude, that is so many kinds of disturbing, just never do that again please." Spike sighed. "Also, it's cross my heart and hope to _fly_."

"Well, we are discussing the death or lack thereof of sentient beings, so I thought the stronger sentiment was warranted."

Spike tried the bacon. A huge smile spread across his face. "Oh... _wow._ Twilight, if alicorns are omnivores then you really need to try this!" He ate three more strips, stuffing them all into his mouth.

Twilight looked askance at the bacon strips. "I think I should ask Princess Celestia if it's safe for alicorns to eat bacon," she said.

"I'm wounded, Twilight! Don't you trust me?"

"Frankly? No," Twilight said. "No, I don't. Do I trust that you've learned the value of friendship and you won't betray your friends for power again? Yes. Do I trust that you feel genuine remorse for what you did and you sincerely want to make amends? Yes. Do I trust that you won't feed me something that makes me turn green, or gives me horrible gas, or makes my horn start shooting off random spells like I've just been turned into the living incarnation of poison joke? No. Not even slightly."

Discord forced a grin onto his face as something crumpled inside him. Of course she didn't trust him. Why would she trust him? He was a traitor, wasn't he? "Oh, by all means, let it all out, Princess. Tell me how you _really_ feel."

"You're still the spirit of chaos and disharmony," Twilight said. "You gave coffee to Pinkie because you wanted to see her disrupt everything. Why should I assume that you aren't playing some kind of prank on me with the bacon?"

"Because you saved my life," Discord snapped, unable to keep up the pretense of good cheer anymore.

Twilight blinked. "When?"

"When you demanded that Tirek let me go. I know what I deserved, Twilight. And I know what you _should_ have done. The smart thing to have done, the just thing to have done, would have been to leave me. He only brought me there so I could see the conclusion of our wager; I wasn't intended to be one of his hostages, because he didn't think you'd want me back, and I didn't either. You could have scuttled the whole deal and put your friends in danger if he'd decided he wasn't going to go along with your demands and a fight broke out again. But you did it anyway. For me. Even though I betrayed all of you, and I didn't deserve it, you still got him to let me go."

"Discord, friendship isn't about giving ponies what they deserve. Neither is forgiveness." Twilight sighed. "You're right, you hadn't done anything I knew of to deserve being released. I found out later that you kept the others alive by making a wager with Tirek, and that you tried to let them out of the cage, but I didn't know any of that. It didn't matter. I wasn't going to leave you with him and let him throw you in a dungeon or something. That wouldn't be justice; justice is carried out in an orderly way, not willy-nilly because some villain doesn't like some other villain. And besides... we were friends. It _hurt_ to hear you'd betrayed us, and I wanted to hear from you what your side of the story was, why you decided to do it, because that's what you do for friends. Even if they do something so terrible that you can't be friends with them anymore, you at least owe them listening to their reasons why."

"You knew my reasons why. I wanted chaos. I wanted freedom to do whatever I wanted. But I didn't want to be alone. I thought Tirek... I thought _he_ was my friend. He acted like he liked me. Like he wanted to see me unleash chaos. He thought I was funny." He looked down at his plate. "But it was all a lie. And I used to be able to tell when ponies were lying, because lying produces disharmony, but there was so much disharmony in his heart... it'd be like staring at the sun trying to identify one single flare within it."

"I had friends who just wanted to use me," Twilight said. "Admittedly, they just wanted to use me because I was Princess Celestia's student and they were social climbers, not because they wanted to steal all the magic in Equestria, but I know how it feels. It made me give up on _having_ friends, for several years. I told myself it was because I had to dedicate myself to my studies and I didn't have time for friends, but it was really because I couldn't tell who was sincere and who was fake. It seemed like everypony turned out to be fake, in the end, and it hurt. So I do understand that part."

"They weren't all fake," Spike said. "I went to a lot of those things you were invited to that you didn't want to go to. Some ponies said you were too stuck up to want to go to parties with lowly ponies that weren't associated with the Princess, but some were really sad and disappointed that you couldn't make it. I'm pretty sure Twinkleshine really did want you to go to Moon Dancer's party with her."

"Maybe so, Spike, but you only have to get burned a few times to be afraid of going anywhere near fire."

"Wouldn't know. Dragon, immune to fire." Spike ate another of Discord's bacon strips.

"Tirek was going to kill me," Discord said.

Twilight looked shocked. "Really? I mean... he didn't kill any ponies during his rampage... are you _sure? _He was evil, but a killer?"

"Twilight, he blew up our tree with you in it," Spike said. "I'm pretty sure he was trying to kill you."

"That was all me, anyway," Discord said. "He kept wanting to kill ponies and I kept talking him out of it. The whole reason we captured your friends, and you, Spike, was that Tirek wanted to take you on directly – which he did anyway after he stole my powers – but I was worried that Ponyville would be destroyed or that one of you two would kill the other one, so I came up with the idea of taking hostages." He wished this conversation hadn't started. It had ruined his appetite. Listlessly he picked at his pancake with his talons. "Trust me, Twilight, he was more than willing to kill."

"Then why did you want to be – never mind." She sighed. "Discord, I know you wanted the freedom to create chaos, but... didn't it ever occur to you that a friend who wants to kill ponies is a terrible friend to have?"

"I thought... I was more powerful than he was, right up until the end... I thought I'd be able to stop him. And it's not as if I'd missed the fact that siding with him made me a villain. I wasn't willing to let him kill ponies, but... I wasn't going to reject his offer and turn on him just because he wanted to. I thought to myself, I'd just stop him."

"But why was he going to kill _you?_ You helped him!"

"Because I made the mistake of telling him, early on, that my magic regenerates from chaos if it's taken away. He said, he knew I'd get my power back after he stole it, so he couldn't let me live." He swallowed. "I was... I was sure he wouldn't let me go, even after you made that part of the deal. I didn't expect you to ask for my freedom, and I certainly didn't expect him to agree."

"Maybe he was looking for an excuse," Twilight said. "Not to kill you. I mean... stealing your magic, well, maybe he'd planned to do that from the very beginning, but if he was acting like your friend... maybe part of him wanted to be friends, but he didn't believe in friendship. He thought it was a weakness. He said so."

"I know. Which admittedly makes me look like an enormous idiot for believing he'd be my friend, but... I thought it was just talk."

"So maybe if he didn't want to be weak, but part of him wanted to be your friend... maybe he was looking for an excuse not to kill you. Maybe he really didn't want to but he thought he had to."

"Why are you even saying this? It's not exactly as if we're going to pull him out of the depths of Tartarus and hand him over to Fluttershy to be reformed."

"I don't know." Twilight shook her head slightly. "I guess... maybe I thought it would make you feel a little bit better. A little less stupid for falling for it."

"It... doesn't, Twilight. Tartarus is a horrible place. Even after all he did, even after he nearly killed me, I still can't feel good about _anyone_ being confined to Tartarus. It would just make it worse if there was any part of him that cared about me." He picked up a bacon strip. "Listen, I didn't tell you any of this so you would feel sorry for me. I wanted to explain... I'm not going to play a malicious prank on you. Not today. Maybe not ever. Probably it won't be the not ever; you're a lot of fun to tease." He smiled weakly. "But definitely not today, and I'd never give you something that actually caused you pain. I didn't go back and retrieve all those books just because I felt bad about selling you all out to Tirek. _You're_ the one I wanted to apologize to, you're the one who lost something permanently and I wanted to do whatever I could to make that up to you... because I'm alive right now because you insisted on freeing me. You didn't have to. It wasn't a wise thing to do, it wasn't what I deserved, it wasn't even really safe for you, though I suppose you didn't know that since you didn't know he had reasons to want to kill me." Discord looked into Twilight's eyes. "But you did it anyway. For me."

"I also went to the ends of Equestria to get a flower to cure a disease you didn't have, and then spent a week stressing out trying to cure the disease you got after that."

"Yes, yes, but you thought I might be contagious. You had reasons to want to cure me that had nothing to do with _me_. This was the first time you did something for me when it wasn't the right thing to do to help or protect someone else as well." He plucked another bacon strip. "I don't really care if you eat it or not, honestly. I made the bacon for myself, and then I offered it to Spike because he's a fellow omnivore, and then I remembered that alicorns are technically omnivorous as well. So I offered to share. But you're right, you shouldn't trust me. I've done nothing to earn any sort of trust. It's just... you saved my _life_, Twilight. I can't honestly remember anypony else doing that for me. Freeing me from captivity, yes, but not when being imprisoned meant I would die. I don't prank Fluttershy... and I don't think I'm going to be pranking you. Much, anyway. Certainly not right _now._"

Twilight looked down at the bacon, then up at Discord again. "All right. I'll try it."

She levitated a piece to her mouth and bit into it. "Tastes... kind of strange. Not bad, exactly. Very salty, and... kind of... _heavy?_ Heavy flavor? Does that even make sense?"

Discord chuckled. "Why are you asking _me_ if it makes sense?"

"He's got a point," Spike said, grinning. "Do you like it? 'Cause it's delicious!"

"Well, I wouldn't call it 'delicious', but... I guess it's not bad. But don't get used to it, Spike, the only ethical way we can get this stuff is if Discord conjures it up for us."

Discord mentally filled in the rest of the sentence with _And Discord can't be trusted_. It hurt. He wanted it to just be over; why hadn't his penance, the restoration of her books, won her over? He'd given her the key to the power that could imprison him, so it was now a part of her and her friends and could never be taken from them again. He'd _hurt_ himself trying to restore as much as possible of what she'd lost forever due to his betrayal. Why wasn't it enough? Would it ever be enough? Did he even have the right to want it to be enough? And why did he suddenly care if he had the right or not? He'd never second-guessed his _right_ to have emotions, before.

At this point Pinkie bounced out to the meadow where they were holding their impromptu picnic, on the side of the castle. She was carrying an improbable number of plates of food. "Hope everypony's still hungry! And everydragon and everydraconequus! 'Cause I've got _more yummies!_"

"I'm still hungry," Spike said.

"Sure, Pinkie, I guess I could eat something," Twilight said.

Pinkie lowered her plates to the ground in a feat of rapid precision movement that impressed even Discord – not that he couldn't do the same thing, but Pinkie was a pony and limited to hooves, not paws or tail or wingclaw. "Come on, folks, eat up!" Her eyes fell on the plate of bacon strips. "Is that _bacon?_"

"Yes, but Discord says it's not from a real pig," Twilight said.

"Which means I can eat some and I don't have to be sad over a poor dead piggy?"

"By all means! Twilight won't eat my bacon, she thinks I'm going to play a terrible prank on her if she does."

"I just _did_ eat a bacon," Twilight said indignantly, and ungrammatically, which was surprising for Twilight but revealed to Discord how thoroughly the ponies had rejected meat-eating since his childhood. Ponies had never eaten a _lot_ of meat, but two generations after the windigos had nearly destroyed the world with ice, occasional meat was still part of the pony diet, a leftover from grandparents who'd only managed to live through the second coming of Fimbulwinter by being willing to hunt and kill for food. He couldn't really blame them; his own kind had been eating ponies to survive those days, and other sapient beings, which was part of why the ponies had harried them to extinction shortly afterward and he was now the last one. And during his Age of Chaos, he'd grown steaks, ribs and chicken legs from trees and bushes, so plenty of ponies had eaten no-kill meat because it was one of the foods he made widely available. But now, they'd rejected meat-eating so thoroughly that a supremely well-educated genius pony had never managed to pick up that there was no such expression as "a bacon".

"Let me try!" Pinkie picked up a bacon strip and munched it. "Mmm, yummy!"

"Pinkie!" Twilight's magic snatched the bacon strip away from Pinkie. "Do you even know if eating meat is healthy for a pony?"

"Oh, Twilight, as if I would have let Pinkie eat bacon if it would harm her?" Discord said with mock, exaggerated indignation to cover up the actual indignation he felt. "After she gave me all her pillows? How low an opinion you have of me!"

"Besides I'm probably going to use him as a pillow again tonight so if I throw up it will probably be on him," Pinkie said. "And if it gives me bad gas he's gonna have to smell it!"

Twilight blinked. "Wait, you two... you're _sleeping_ together?"

"You make it sound so sordid," Discord said.

Pinkie giggled. "It's not like _that_, silly filly! I gave him all my pillows so he has to be my pillow! It's just like a sleepover, we're not having sex or anything!"

Twilight spluttered and choked on her coffee at Pinkie's unexpected bluntness, while Spike's eyes went impossibly wide and Discord just chuckled. When Twilight got control of herself, she managed to stammer out, "D-do you really think that's _proper_, Pinkie?"

Pinkie shrugged. "I don't even know what proper is. But what I do with my body is my business and also the business of whoever I'm doing things with my body to _their_ body so that makes it their business too, but it's not anypony _else's_ business so who cares? But you're my friend and Discord is your friend so I would tell you if we were having sex because if your friends are friends with benefits with each other then that's kind of your business because otherwise things might get awkward sometimes, but we're not, so that's okay!"

"Now I wonder if we _should_," Discord said. "It seems to cause such entertaining reactions in ponies when they contemplate the possibility."

"Naah, that's not a good reason to have sex with your friends," Pinkie said. "Pranks are funny, but having sex with a friend just so you can make your other friends' brains go explody is not a funny prank and it's kind of mean to do to the friend you're having sex with because then it's like you're using them for pranking your other friends and not because you actually want to do it with them because you like them. Anyway you are kind of like a giant talking teddy bear, except with dragon parts and a pony-ish sort of face, but still kind of like a big fun plushie who's alive, so you're a lot of fun to have as a friend but I don't think I would want any benefits because plushies aren't my thing, sorry."

"Oh, Pinkie! Are you _friendzoning_ me?" Discord put his paw against his eyes. "Say it isn't so!"

"No, I'm plushie zoning you," Pinkie said. "Sorry but it's your own fault for being so fluffy!"

"Could we not talk about this in front of Spike? Or me? Ever? _Please?_" Twilight was turning slightly green. Discord had to struggle not to visibly laugh at her.

"Why don't we make a deal? Pinkie and I won't discuss the intimate details of our lack of intimate relations in front of you, and you give Pinkie back her bacon. Which is perfectly healthy for a pony to eat in moderation, though if she'd eaten all the bacon Spike has, she might make herself ill."

"I'll make sure Pinkie doesn't eat too much bacon and get sick!" Spike volunteered.

"By eating it yourself?" Discord asked, grinning.

"Yup! It's a tough job, but if it's the only way to protect Pinkie, I'm up for it!" Spike said cheerfully.

"Can I eat three bacons?"

"Oh, four or five bacons at least should be perfectly safe," Discord said, grinning even wider at the fact that apparently Pinkie didn't know the proper grammar for bacon either.

"So I'm supposed to have a conference with Mayor Mare later today, and we're going to hash out the details of what it _means_ that there's a princess in Ponyville, now that I'm an official princess," Twilight said. "Spike, I'll need you with me to take notes, and Pinkie, will you come too?"

"Okie dokie!"

"I'm a little bit worried about it because I don't want to seem like I'm intruding on the democratic local leadership, and Mayor Mare really is much better suited to run Ponyville proper than I am..."

Discord listened with interest to the conversation about politics for only a minute or two before remembering that he wasn't going to be allowed to try to monkeywrench this, deliberately create problems for either Twilight or the mayor, or pretty much do anything to increase the anarchy around here, at which point the discussion ceased to hold his attention and he picked at his food listlessly again. What was he actually going to _do_ with his life? It was all very well to say he was reformed, and to try to be helpful, but he was so used to analyzing every situation for an opportunity to cause chaos, disharmony and general mischief, what was he going to _do_ if doing those things was off the table?

Before any of this had happened, he'd been perfectly willing to continue causing chaos in the small, indirect ways he felt he could get away with without making Fluttershy angry at him. It hadn't been as much fun as turning the world upside down in every way he wanted, but he'd taken it as a challenge – how much disharmony could he cause before Fluttershy got mad? How much chaos could he trick ponies into causing, without actually using his powers, just words? In some ways, he'd thought to himself, it was even better this way – being able to do anything he liked any way he liked was fun, but no way to keep his wits sharp. Having potential consequences he had to avoid added spice to the game, sharpened him up and made him work for it. It was strangely satisfying to make chaos that way, with restrictions he had to overcome and a limited toolset, because when he succeeded he'd felt genuine accomplishment.

Now, though... now he _wanted_ all of them to be friends with him. He wanted Twilight to trust him when he offered her bacon. He wanted Pinkie to continue treating him as a fluffy pillow; he hadn't slept beside anypony since the first time he'd been turned to stone, and he hadn't realized how much he'd missed it until he'd woken up this morning with a Pinkie blanket. Even more than sex, he craved simple contact; he could create full-tactile constructs to have sex with, or go to bars for xenophiles and let some lucky pony with a taste for strange pick him up, but the tactile constructs tended to disappear while he was sleeping and he didn't trust strangers enough to let himself be vulnerable around them. Pinkie had been the first pony to, literally and simply, _sleep_ with him in over a millennium, and he wanted it. He wanted Rainbow Dash to stop acting like he was going to turn on them any minute now, even though he just had. He wanted Rarity and Applejack to at least not try to get in the way of him being friends with their little sisters, and if they'd accept him as a friend themselves, that would be best. He wanted to earn Celestia's forgiveness. Maybe even Luna's someday.

So he couldn't make chaos that would make _any_ of them angry at him. Which meant no disharmony among ponies. Which was about half of the things in life he found entertaining were now things he didn't dare do. What _was_ he going to do instead?

An earth stallion poked his head around the side of the building. "Is Princess Twilight here?"

"Oh, that's me!" Twilight got to her hooves. "What is it?"

"I got a delivery of books to drop off with you."

"Yes! Wonderful! Thanks so much! Where do I sign?"

Discord stood up. "Twilight, why are you getting shipments of books when I went to so much effort to recover yours?"

"Because I'm taking my personal collection to the castle, which means I've got to replace about half the books that are going to the new library you built me, and then I've also got to replace all the library books that I used to treat as part of my personal collection that really belonged to the library, so I still need just as many book donations as before you rescued my books, except now, I'm making a library for Ponyville that someone else can take over _and_ I'm making a library for the Friendship Palace!" Twilight grinned at him with excitement.

"Whoa," the earth stallion said, and took a step back. "Princess, what's _he_ doing here?"

"Who – you mean Discord? He lives here now. After he helped us defeat Tirek and return everypony's magic, I've made a place for him here at the castle."

"Beggin' pardon, Your Highness, but that's not how I remember it going down," the stallion said. "I remember that _thing_ rounding us all up so his partner could steal our magic."

"Yes... well..."

Discord took a deep breath, forcing his paws to unclench, and stepped forward. The stallion immediately took another step backward. The same sick feeling he used to get, the mixture of anger and grief that they feared him, mingled with shame and guilt, because this time he knew he deserved it. "That did happen," Discord said. "Tirek lied to me and tricked me into helping him. It was a terrible mistake on my part, and I've sworn to try to make amends for doing it."

The stallion scowled at him, and then looked at Twilight. "Princess, I'd like to get unloaded fast as I can, if you don't mind. Can I just leave the cart for your staff to unpack, and I'll send someone back for it later?"

Twilight sighed. "That would be fine. I'll have the cart brought to Sweet Apple Acres so you can pick it up there after we unload it."

"That would be mighty appreciated, Your Highness. Thank you kindly."

He left. "Well, that went well," Spike said. "Kind of."

"Let's unpack the books, Spike." Twilight went around the corner. Discord didn't follow her.

"It's never going to be enough, will it?" he whispered to himself.

"Don't feel so bad!" Pinkie said. "You did a bad thing and now everypony's mad at you but just do good things that help everypony and they'll get over it!"

_How am I going to just do good things when almost everything I want to do is something ponies think is bad?_ He didn't say it, just stared at the ground. Pinkie was so cheerful, so optimistic. She'd never lived a life like his. As strange as she was to her family, they still accepted her. They still loved her. And she had no problem making as many friends as she wanted.

"Wait for me!" Pinkie caroled at Twilight and Spike. "I'm going to help with the books! And then I'm gonna _CLEAN ALL THE THINGS!"_ She looked back at Discord. "Are you coming? You could help!"

"Ah, no," he said. "I, um, I'm going to visit Fluttershy."

"Okie dokie! But come back tonight, I still need a pillow! I'm going to make a _huuuuuge_ pot of spaghetti and I'll put peanut butter and hot chilis and pineapple in yours!"

He smiled wryly. "Pinkie, sometimes I think the only reason you want to spend time with me is that it gives you an excuse to cook things that literally no other pony would be willing to eat."

"I like to cook different things! But not baked bads, because even you would have thought those were yucky, I think." She hopped off after Twilight and Spike. "See you later, Discord!"

* * *

At first he didn't actually go to see Fluttershy. What he really wanted was to be alone, to think. The problem was the lack of anywhere to go. When he walked out onto the street, ponies glared at him, or ran away. One enterprising foal even threw a rock, and Discord considered the possibility of turning the rock into a roc and terrorizing the colt with it, but not today. Some other time, maybe. He wanted to go to the Everfree, where he usually went if he wanted to think about something and he didn't want to go back to his private pocket dimension, but he wasn't allowed to without an escort, which would completely miss the point.

Why did he even care, he wondered? He used to thrive on hatred. It had been his bread and butter, a source of sweet, sweet disharmony. When had it changed? Why was their hatred hurting him now?

_Because you never thought you deserved it, before. You added unpredictability and spice to their lives and they hated you for it. Why not enjoy their suffering, then? But now you know you've done something terrible to them. Now you know you deserve to be hated._

That was what hurt. Not their hatred, but the fact that he couldn't blithely ignore it on the grounds that ponies were simply haters and whatchagonnado? After Tirek took his power, he finally felt empathy for the ponies he'd helped Tirek attack... far too late, of course, but he _knew_ now that what he'd done was horrible. They were justified in hating him, so he couldn't make himself simply not care, like he usually did. He could either revel in being outright evil or he could squirm with guilt. And while he'd been called evil many, many times, Discord had never thought of himself as evil. Selfish, sure, he was willing to own that, and disharmonious, certainly, but it was his role in existence to spread disharmony and counterbalance the Tree, so how could that be truly evil? The world needed him to do it, whether ponies liked it or not.

This was different. He hadn't needed to help Tirek steal pony magic. In fact, given what his role was in Equestria and the world, it had honestly been a terrible idea from the beginning and a violation of what he existed for. The chaos avatars existed to _preserve_ magic and keep it distributed, not to let it superconcentrate to one vessel. Of course he hadn't thought about that at the time, but now that he was regretting his actions anyway, he could see it. He'd violated his purpose in life, and he'd inflicted something so awful on ponies, it fell close to the range of murder... he'd deprived them of possibilities, cut down the world's complexity, allowed power to gravitate to a single point and promoted the loss of Chaos in the long run. The only reason it wasn't as bad as killing them was that they'd recovered from it.

He deserved their hatred.

Sighing, he decided that he would, in fact, go visit Fluttershy. Her home was out of the way, where no ponies would be likely to come by and give him the stinkeye.

* * *

Fluttershy was bustling around, packing a suitcase and setting aside animal feeders. "Fluttershy! How is my favorite little pegasus today?" Discord asked, his tone cheerful.

"Oh, hello, Discord." She glanced at him once, head dipping low and her mane half over one eye, and then returned to what she was doing. "You were asleep for a long time. Are you feeling better?"

"Much better, thank you. What's all the hustle and bustle about here?"

"Oh, um, the Manehattan Zoo wants me to come in and help calm the animals down," she said. "Tirek smashed a lot of the zoo and the animals all ran away, but it's Manehattan so they don't really have anywhere to go? So they want my help in persuading them to come home. I said I was sure they have animal speakers in Manehattan but they really want me to help them, specifically, so of course I said I'd go."

"Oh." There had been so many buildings. Discord had animated trees and sent them in to hold up structures that were collapsing, because when Tirek had taken a lot of magic, he'd had to expel it violently, by blasting things. "I, uh. Was that one of the ones I sent the trees in?"

"I didn't hear about any trees." Fluttershy still hadn't looked at him since the one brief glance when he arrived. She flitted out of the house carrying a bag of birdseed and started pouring it into bird feeders. "They don't think any of the animals were killed, though. At least they didn't find any bodies under the wreckage."

"That's good to hear."

"Yes, it is."

This was unbearably awkward. "Fluttershy, is there anything I can do to help you? I could fill those bird feeders for you..." He raised his talon.

Now she looked at him. "Oh, no, you don't have to do that. I have everything under control here. Just a few more feeders and a little conversation with Angel Bunny to remind him, and then I can grab my bag and head for the train."

"I could go with you... maybe help with the repairs..."

Fluttershy looked him directly in the eyes. "Discord... that's not a good idea, and I think you know why."

"But I want to help."

"Sometimes if you hurt somepony, you can't help them right away except by giving them space, because just thinking about you reminds them of how they were hurt. I think probably every pony at the zoo lost their powers to Tirek. They aren't going to want to be reminded of that." She looked away again. "I'm sorry. But I think you should find places around Ponyville to help, if you're trying to make amends. You and Tirek didn't get all the ponies in Ponyville, so maybe some of them won't be afraid of you."

It was true – they'd saved Ponyville for last, at Discord's insistence, and Tirek had been focused enough on coming after the Bearers, he'd only pulled the magic from the ponies he'd happened to see out on the streets. Anyone who'd been out on a farm, like Applejack's family, or inside a building, like the Cakes, or Cheerilee and the school foals, had been spared. But it had been a nice day, and there had been quite a few ponies walking the streets or sitting at tables at outdoor cafes. When Discord had given flowers to Celestia, there had been relatively few ponies on the dance floor, most of them from Ponyville, and many of them apparently hadn't yet heard the details of his role in events – several had even smiled at him. It hadn't lasted. As ponies from Canterlot had filtered in and as the Ponyville ponies had shared gossip with each other, he'd _felt_ the wave of anger and fear toward him building, rippling through them; he could sense disharmony, and the presence of a frightening enemy who'd hurt them at what was supposed to be a victory celebration had upset more than a few ponies and even sown a bit of dissension toward Celestia and toward Twilight. Which he might have enjoyed, another time, but not when Twilight had saved his life, and not when the dissent was all about hating and mistrusting _him._

"You're in Ponyville. Can I at least take care of your animals while you're gone?"

Fluttershy shook her head. "Angel Bunny has it all in hoof. Or in paw, I guess. And you and he don't get along, so it would probably be better if you didn't try to help out this time. Maybe some other time."

She wasn't looking at him. She wasn't letting him help. She had flat out _said_ that he needed to give the ponies he'd hurt some space. Discord swallowed. "Fluttershy... are – are we still friends?"

She stopped filling the feeders for a moment, setting her bag down. Slowly she turned. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears. "We're still friends," she said. "I... I'm not going to let one mistake ruin our friendship forever. But..."

"But you want me to go."

"I just... need some time. To think about things. I... I promise you we'll still be friends. But I have to be alone for a little while, Discord. That's why I agreed to go to Manehattan right now."

"When will you be back?"

"Um, I guess after we've rounded up all the missing animals. Maybe two or three days, I'm not sure. We can talk then, maybe, if, if you want to. I think."

"I'm sorry," he said helplessly.

"I know," Fluttershy said softly.

She flew to the door of the cottage. "I... have to go in and talk to Angel Bunny and get my bag. I'll see you in a few days?"

"Of course." He forced a bright smile onto his face. "Auf wiedersehen!"

Then he teleported before she could see the tears starting to well up in _his_ eyes.

* * *

The Cutie Mark Crusader clubhouse was hardly the finest accommodation possible, but it was in Ponyville and technically speaking he had every right to be here, since the fillies had made him an honorary member of their club. He wouldn't have tried it if they'd been there, though. The day of the party – however long ago that was, he'd been asleep or time traveling through most of the intervening time so he had no idea – the Crusaders hadn't seemed to have any idea of what he'd done, and had been friendly with him. By now, though, he was sure they knew. And the thought of the little girls who'd opened their hearts to him and trusted him to help them with their increasingly outrageous quest for cutie marks now looking at him with fear, or hate, made him hurt inside, the same way he was hurting over the conversation he'd just had with Fluttershy.

_I'm going to lose her. She doesn't want to be friends anymore. She's angry with me. She hates me._ He lay sprawled on the wooden floor of the clubhouse, staring emptily at the grain of the wood. Tears wanted to well up, but he used his powers to block them. _I have to fix this. But how? She doesn't want me to help. She doesn't want me to make amends to her, because she doesn't even want to see me. _

Oh, how he wished he was capable of initiating a time loop that he himself was the focus of. That was impossible, sadly; he'd inflicted time loops on ponies on occasion, and he could step sideways out of time to monitor the loop, but he couldn't start a loop that included himself because for him to run a loop, he couldn't be in linear time himself at all. And nopony else had the power to start a time loop. In theory, he could trigger one that would run on its own, which would allow him to be the focus of it because no one would be monitoring it. In practice, that was so horrifyingly dangerous he didn't dare; a loop with no one monitoring it could theoretically run forever without ever ending, a prospect that horrified him more than death, stone or losing his powers.

There was no way to change what he'd done; he couldn't loop, and to travel in time and have any hope of affecting the outcome of anything, he'd have to do it the chaotic way, which involved exactly no precision whatsoever as to when he would end up. He was capable of pulling off pseudo-harmonic time travel, what he'd just done with Pinkie, where he could control exactly when he'd appear and how long he could stay there, but that one had rules, such as the inability to overlap himself more than once and more importantly the inability to change any events that a sentient being had observed. He couldn't go back and warn himself not to trust Tirek and make all of this have never happened. There was no time travel method available to him where that would work.

So he _couldn't_ fix it. He couldn't change the past. He couldn't change the facts of his betrayal. He couldn't make Fluttershy forget his betrayal without running the risk of erasing much more of her memory than he wanted to. He could deharmonize her, unbalance her personality in such a way as to foreground her trust and minimize her hurt, but from experience he knew that trying that particular combination on a pony usually resulted in a pony having a childlike trust in everything that quickly got them killed or seriously harmed. Fluttershy was already too vulnerable for his tastes, too likely to trust the wrong individual. _Of course. She trusted me, after all._

There wasn't anything he could do with his powers to fix this, and he didn't know nearly enough about friendship to fix it any other way. Again the tears tried to burn their way out of his eyes. This time he let them, though he wouldn't let himself sob or otherwise make a sound. _I'm going to lose her. My best friend and she doesn't trust me anymore. And I deserve it._

Cucumber sandwiches, falling to the ground with tiny little thumps.

He lost it then, his magic's ability to restrain his emotions failing completely, more from a lack of will than a lack of magic. Discord curled up on the floor and sobbed, burying his face in his paws. _Should have stayed in Tartarus. Should have let them turn me to stone._

* * *

It was not the nature of chaos to restrain itself. It was also not the nature of chaos to dwell on the past, or to hold still on any emotional state.

Once the tears finally stopped, Discord actually felt better. He wiped his face and sat up on his hind legs, sitting more like a pony than a biped, tail curling around himself. Fluttershy hadn't actually said she hated him or that she would never trust him again. She'd said he hurt her and she needed space. Well, strictly speaking, she hadn't even said that; she'd made it a more generic statement about ponies and how they handled being hurt, but he could read between the lines, especially after she admitted she wanted some time alone, away from him and her other friends.

Maybe if he gave her the space she'd asked for, everything would be all right. Maybe she'd come back and she'd be recovered from this, the way it had seemed right after the formation of the castle when she'd joked with him and seemed to be comfortable with him and happy, and it would all go back to the way it was before.

Or maybe he'd ask Twilight for advice. She was the _Princess_ of _Friendship_, after all. Of course, she didn't trust him either. But at least she _looked_ at him, she talked to him, she didn't hide her face from him. Not that hiding was at all in character for Twilight anyway. But she seemed... friendlier, at least, than Fluttershy was being right now. Maybe because of the last key, or all the books he'd saved and the tree he'd grown for her. Maybe she could give him some advice on getting Fluttershy back to the way she was before. Pinkie probably would be no help, she'd likely just suggest throwing a party. And he wasn't sure any of the others would _give_ him advice. Maybe Rarity; she'd seemed oddly sympathetic to him yesterday. But it was Twilight's job to solve friendship problems, right? Wasn't that what her new title meant? He should ask her.

On the other hand, asking Twilight involved admitting to Twilight that he was having problems.

No. He'd wait for Fluttershy to come back and see how things were then. If everything just came back to normal, then great. If it didn't, _then_ he'd swallow his pride, expose his weakness to Twilight and ask for advice.

* * *

Twilight wasn't even at the castle when he came back. Pinkie and Spike were cleaning the place and organizing it; not that there was much to organize, Twilight apparently hadn't even bought furniture yet. Rarity had brought over more pillows and blankets to make pseudo-beds with, but Pinkie hadn't apparently put any in her own room, which gave Discord a sense of relief. He couldn't _ask_ Pinkie to sleep on top of him – that would make him look far too weak and needy – but he really wanted her there. Anypony, really, but he wanted someone who'd sleep beside him without the complication of sex – he knew from experience that anypony he repeatedly had sex with, especially one who slept in his bed and showed him physical affection outside of sex, was someone who'd gain an emotional hold on him that they could use to influence him unduly, and he felt as if he had too many ponies who had emotional influence over him already. Pinkie had made it clear that she wasn't interested in him that way – which was unfortunate in one way, as he knew Pinkie's philosophies of sex and romance were close to his own, mostly that life was too short to limit oneself to one sex partner, and she'd probably be a lot of fun, but on the other hand, it made her safe to solicit physical contact from without the emotional complications he'd end up with if he had sex with her. He wasn't sure how he felt about being defined as a giant plushie, but to the best of his knowledge Pinkie wasn't a xenophile, so her lack of interest in him that way was understandable without being insulting, and besides, why did he go to all the work to set her up with Cheese Sandwich if he was going to want her for himself?

He was _so bored._

What Pinkie and Spike were doing was literally anathema to him. Figuring out the structure they wanted to use to organize what few non-book items were in the castle, putting the things away in those places... they were turning chaos into order. He couldn't even stand to watch them. But Twilight was having _meetings_, and doing politics, and what he really wanted to do was go find her and do something hilarious to interrupt the proceedings, because even the thought of Twilight being in long boring meetings with the mayor made him want to crumple ostentatiously to the floor and pretend to be dead of ennui. But he knew better. He was trying to be good, he was trying to prove that he really had reformed this time, that his heart was in it and he was trying to make amends. So, basically, everything he could think of to do that was fun was off limits.

What had he done before chaos? As far back as he could remember, he'd enjoyed messing with ponies (or, if he went back far enough in his memory, draconequui), and he'd enjoyed being creative and altering the world with his powers (or pretending to do it, back before he'd had his powers, when he was very small), but there had been a time when chaos and disharmony hadn't been the most important things in his life, when he'd known how to have fun without necessarily annoying others. What had he _done_ back then?

He thought of his teen years, in the old castle with Celestia and Luna. He'd played a lot of pranks, he remembered that. And fantasized a lot about Celestia... ah, teenage hormones. What else had he done? There had been studying magic – he'd been obsessed, desperate to learn as much as he possibly could, as driven as Twilight actually, though it had manifested in different ways. He'd practiced, constantly. There had been books; he remembered setting a spell on a book so it would read itself to him, and lying back in his bed, paws behind his head and eyes closed, letting himself be drawn in by the story. There had been running around playing with Luna, because Celestia even then was starting to be crushed by the weight of the decorum demanded of the Crown Princess and hadn't been allowed to play foolish games with her little sister anymore, so Discord had played with her instead. The memory was bittersweet now, given how bad his relationship with Luna had become.

_"Do not begin to compare me to you. I did terrible things, things that were arguably worse than anything you had done, yes. But I repent of them. No one but I can fight __my__ nightmares, and they are always, always of my own actions, always of the monster I became. You have no remorse. I don't know what you dream of, but when I glimpse bits and pieces through the shield you built around your mind, I can see that your dreams of chaos and tormenting ponies are __pleasant__ ones to you. Tia thinks you can again be the Discord we grew up with, someday... but I think you never were. I think you are a monster that rose from the grave wearing his face and his voice and his memories, and perhaps you even think you are the Discord we once knew, but you aren't. You can't be. He wielded chaos, but you __are__ chaos. And that is all you are and all you will ever choose to be, and that is why I will not forgive you."_

Discord pushed the memory away. He wasn't trying to make himself _more_ depressed here. There had to have been something he used to do that he'd liked, before chaos became his everything.

A different memory surfaced out of nowhere, from so far back he usually couldn't even remember. _"Someday I'm gonna fly like you!" "Pretty unlikely, little bro, I'm the Principle of Speed. But hey, it's a goal worth shooting for!"_

His mouth twisted in a wry grin. Normally he never even thought about his older brothers, or any of the draconequui in his clan besides his mother; few of them had given him the time of day. But he'd hero-worshipped his closest-in-age brother the way Scootaloo worshipped Rainbow Dash, and for some of the same reasons. And even after he'd ended up alone, he'd wanted to fly, fast and strong; he'd worked at it harder than anything except practicing his magic and learning to speak pony.

After his wings had been bound and crippled, he'd focused on learning levitation so he could fly anyway, even with wings that would forevermore be naturally small and weak. And then he'd learned body transformation so he could make his wings temporarily larger, expand his natural flight field, and truly fly the way a draconequus ought to be able to do, without assistance from chaos magic. And then he'd practiced a lot. Why had he lost interest in it, anyway? Oh, right, because it had had nothing to do with chaos.

Heh. Well, now he had an idea for something he could do, anyway.

* * *

Rainbow Dash was napping on a cloud.

Normally Discord preferred it when there was a little bit of unpredictability to life, but right now, he was pleased that she was exactly where he expected her to be, because it meant a lot less work, and a lot less exposure to angry pegasi, that he didn't have to fly around looking for her. He plopped himself down on the cloud next to her. "Who's a cute little Dashie? Yes you are, yes you are. You want an ear scritch, girl? Ear scritch?"

Rainbow Dash murmured in her sleep, smiling, and snuggled against his ear-scritching talon. "Mmm."

"Hang on, let me get a picture of this." He spawned a second self. The second him ostentatiously posed a camera. "Gute, gute, iz perfecto!" Second Discord said in a parody accent, and snapped a few pictures, then pulled out a film camera and started rolling. "And action!"

"Huh? Whuh—_Discord!_" Rainbow Dash kicked outward and flapped, putting distance between herself and Discord immediately. Her eyes fell on Second Discord. "You perv! What the hay were you doing, _filming_ me while I was sleeping?"

"Blackmail material," Discord said cheerfully. "You'd never have believed me if I'd just _told_ you that you were trying to snuggle against me in your sleep—"

"I was not!"

"There, you see?" He rolled down a small movie screen and had Second Discord start projecting the film, showing Rainbow's unconscious form mumbling happily and leaning her head back against the scritching.

"That did not happen! Everypony knows what a liar you are, Dipcord!"

"Well, then today's your lucky day! If you're as awesome as you think you are, _maybe_ you might just get a chance to pay me back for that."

"I am 20% more awesome than I think I am. Whattya mean, a chance for payback?"

"How would you like the chance to take one free shot? One kick, anywhere, with my sworn word that I won't dodge it or try to block."

Rainbow scowled. "Why would you let me kick you? That doesn't make any sense. And don't tell me it's no fun to make sense or something stupid like that. You've got a reason and it's probably a bad one."

"Of course I have a reason, and the reason is that I am mind-numbingly, soul-crushingly, devastatingly _bored._ And I want you to entertain me."

She huffed. "First off, you being bored is my problem why? Second, do I even wanna know why getting kicked in the face or something is entertainment for you?"

"No, no, that's not the entertainment. That's the stakes if I lose, which I don't intend to."

"I'm not playing any games with you, Discord!"

"Oh, what a shame. And here I thought you'd welcome the opportunity to use your _awesome_ flying skills and do what you do best – well, what you do second best next to bragging about yourself – to try to defeat me in a game of aerial Tag. But, I suppose, it's only natural; you recognize that no pegasus, however awesome, could possibly compete against the magnificent flying talents of a draconequus."

Her scowl was pure entertainment in and of itself. "Like you wouldn't totally cheat."

"I'll Pinkie Promise if you like," he wheedled.

Rainbow flitted to his other side, restlessly. Discord simply morphed his front into his back to follow her. "Don't do that, that's creepy," she said.

"Then don't fly behind my head. That's rude."

"_I'm_ rude? After you—" She stopped herself and took a deep breath. "You trying to provoke me into a fight or something?"

"No, I'm trying to provoke you into a flying competition, because I can't cause chaos if I'm trying to make amends for... for what I did, and if I can't cause chaos, I need _some_ kind of adrenaline rush to distract me from wanting to turn the grass blue and the sky green."

"You know this Rainbow Power stuff we got from the Tree is like the Elements, except you can't take it off us, right? You do anything like that and we _can_ turn you to stone so fast you won't even know it's happening until the birds start pooping on you again."

Now it was his turn to take a deep breath. "I _know_ that. I knew that when I gave Twilight the last key. I knew that when I _bookmarked the pages_ to show you how to unlock the box. But I don't want to make Fluttershy have to break her promise, to say nothing of the fact that I really don't want to be a statue again, so I _need_ something to do! If I can't find something exciting and fun to do so I don't think about chaos, I'm going to snap, Rainbow. And by snap I mean both my sanity and my fingers."

"You... really want to play some kind of game instead of making chaos?"

"It's not 'instead of'; wreaking chaos isn't an option. Not now. Not if I..." He sat down on the cloud, heavily. "I did something terrible, Rainbow. You know it, I know it, everypony in Equestria knows it. And I'm _sorry._ But sorry isn't good enough all by itself. If I just go back to doing what I want to do, this fast, it does nothing to prove that I'm sorry. I'm trying to make sacrifices to show ponies I'm sincere... but it's so _hard._ Fluttershy wouldn't let me do anything to help and I can't find anything to do."

"Fluttershy's gone to Manehattan. I went with her to the train station."

"I know, I went to visit her and she told me."

"So how did you think you were gonna help her in Manehattan when you were the one that caused the problem?"

"Isn't the one who caused the problem usually _supposed_ to be the one who has to fix it? But she says... they wouldn't want to see me, after what I helped Tirek do. And I suppose she's right." He sighed, and then forced energy back into his tone. "So! I remembered that I used to like to fly, once upon a time, so I figured that trying to dodge you might be thrilling enough to occupy my attention."

"You can teleport and use magic and stuff."

"Yes, but I don't even want to. I want to _fly_ for once. If I Pinkie Promise not to use my magic during the game, will you do it?"

"Discord, your wings are tinier than Scoots' when you think about how big your body is. How the hay are you gonna fly against any pegasus without using your magic to levitate or something?"

Discord grinned broadly and unfolded his wings, which, considering that they hadn't been folded, drew a very amusing expression from Rainbow Dash. His wingspan was now three times what it had been, a normal ratio to his body size for a flying serpentine dragonoid. "Like this."

"Wow." Rainbow stared at his wings as he extended them fully. "Why don't you keep them like this all the time? They're, like, a hundred percent cooler this way."

Discord posed as if he were a pegasus model in a cheesecake shot. "Oh, Rainbow, I knew that eventually you'd see my true beauty!"

Rainbow turned red. "As if," she snorted. "I'm a pegasus, 'course I appreciate nice wings. Doesn't mean the rest of you doesn't still make me wanna grab a barf bag."

"You always say such romantic things to me," Discord said, sighing with his paws clasped in front of him and his eyes improbably large.

"So how do I get you to stand still and let me kick you again?"

Discord grinned. "By catching me!"

He shot upward as, predictably, Rainbow lunged for him. She followed.

This _was_ fun. Why had he stopped doing things like this? He'd used wings to fly during the dragon wars, quite a lot, because he had to conserve his magic in those days and a single spell to give him powerful flying wings burned a lot less of it than constant levitation did. Discord, like any flying creature over a certain size and weight, had a magical flight field, which was a property of his body and entirely separate from his chaos magic. It was still magic – Tirek had taken it too when he'd taken the rest of Discord's magic – but it came from a different magical pool. And like other winged creatures with a magical flight field, he still needed his wings to have a certain minimum of size and muscle strength in order to use them. While the injuries that had been inflicted on him in his childhood had healed millennia ago, they'd prevented his wings from growing with the rest of his body, so in his natural, default state, they were not large enough to easily get a full-grown draconequus off the ground. He could _use_ them without levitation magic, he could even outfly Fluttershy with them for a few minutes, but then, almost anyone who could fly at all could outfly Fluttershy, and the physical effort it took him to use them left his muscles burning and his lungs short of breath within a quarter hour of flight.

Most of the time he barely used them at all, relying on his levitation, but when he expected to have to conserve magic or when he was up against chaos-suppression fields, he could transform them to the size they should have been, and they'd stay that way for a few days if he didn't turn them back. They got in his way on the ground at this size – he was used to having the small wings that easily tucked away against his back – so he didn't usually keep them like this any longer than he needed to. But he'd forgotten how _good_ it felt to fly on wingpower and his flight field with full-size wings.

He spent several minutes performing simple dodges, ducking and weaving and using clouds for cover as Rainbow chased him. Then she started getting creative, performing acrobatic flips to let herself change vector rapidly, flying in tight spirals so she could shoot off at him in whichever direction he dodged in, so he did the same, demonstrating how much more acrobatic a serpentine dragon's body could be than a pony's. It was a lot harder to use his muscles to sling his midsection sideways, out of parallel with his head and tail, than it was to use chaos magic to do it, but the sense of satisfaction when Rainbow Dash flew right past him without being able to touch him, too fast to change her direction to hit him above or below, was tremendous. His own vector change stunts were faster and more flexible than hers, because a pegasus couldn't double her body over and shift her flight field to point in the opposite direction more or less instantly; a pegasus had to do a flip to accomplish what Discord could do just by bending. He could also spiral himself, contorting into coils wide enough that Rainbow would fly straight through them, and then snap back into a straight line and arrow himself away.

Despite all his physical advantages over Rainbow, however, he had two major disadvantages: his technique was rusty after so long depending on nothing but chaos magic to accomplish what he was now trying to do with his body, and also, his wings had gotten very, very little exercise in a very long time. Making them bigger had made them naturally stronger, but hadn't improved their endurance any. They started to ache, and then to burn, and then they were hurting enough that it forced him to slow down... which meant that when Rainbow barreled into him, he couldn't dodge quickly enough to keep her from smashing them both down onto a cloud.

"I win," she said, standing on his chest and looking down at him with a huge grin on her face.

Discord panted. "So you did. Let me catch... my breath."

Rainbow got off of him and flitted above him. Amazingly, at least from his perspective, she didn't even seem to be winded much, and certainly there was no sign that her wings ached like his did. "Take your time. I still haven't figured out where I wanna boot you."

He sat up, breathing deeply, folding his wings against his back. They still hurt a lot, but he didn't transform them back, not yet. The pain reminded him of when he was mortal, when Celestia had been his lover and Luna had practically been his sister-in-law. He wouldn't give up his role as the chaos avatar for anything, but he was starting to feel like he had been happier before.

"I am impressed," he said, trying not to wheeze. "You _are_ good. If you'd been alive at the age and skill level you have now when I was a child, and I'd known you, I might have been as bad as Scootaloo."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, I was obsessed with being a better flyer, when I was a child. Practiced constantly. And it began because I wanted to be like my older brother, though I kept up my interest in flying long after he was gone."

"You had an older brother?" Rainbow asked, sounding skeptical. "Was he as chaotic as you are?"

"No, no." Discord shook his head. "Draconequus magic wasn't inherently chaotic anymore than alicorn magic is inherently about moving the sun. We had something that was... well, I suppose halfway between cutie marks and your Elements. We called them Principles, and when you found what yours was, you found your magic, because your magic was bound to your Principle. I was the Principle of Chaos, so, chaos magic. My brother was the Principle of Speed. You'd probably have gotten along with him... well, if ponies and draconequui had been getting along, which they weren't, but if you'd known each other in a different time, maybe."

"What was his name?" Rainbow asked, the skepticism gone from her voice. "And how fast was he?"

"You know, I don't remember? I usually addressed him as Big Brother, but I think I _used_ to know what his actual name was. He died a very, very long time ago." Discord looked out at the horizon, a wistful note in his voice. "I don't actually know how fast he was because I was too young to be able to measure such things, but he was fast in the air, on the ground, climbing trees, swimming... he could do _anything_ fast. He could speed other things up, too, like cooking. When we found potatoes or other vegetables that really aren't edible until you cook them, he could cook them in a few minutes, whereas anyone else it'd have taken an hour or so."

"I'm... sorry about him being dead," Rainbow said awkwardly, hovering.

"Oh, he'd be dead by now anyway; draconequui aren't naturally immortal. He wouldn't have lasted through my millennium in stone." He sighed. "I can't even remember his face, you know. But he was my hero, the way you are to Scootaloo. Somewhere along the way... I forgot how much I used to love to fly."

"Did you always do that wing change thing?"

"After I had enough magic to pull it off, yes. My wings weren't always this small in proportion to my body, but they didn't grow properly." He wasn't going to explain to her why not. Rainbow Dash was the last pony in the universe he wanted to pity him. "I flew without magical aid – well, without aid from my chaos powers, obviously I was using magic to fly but it was a flight field, like a pegasus – for a good bit of my childhood. Then I outgrew my wings, so first I mastered levitation, and then I figured out how to make them bigger."

"Huh." She folded her forelegs over each other as she hovered. "Why exactly are you telling me all this?"

Discord chuckled. "You think I know?"

"Well, it's not like anypony else would know why you did something."

"True, but it doesn't follow that that means I _do_ know. I tend to follow my whims without thinking about it much. You might have noticed this."

"Yeah, you might want to think about doing less of that." She landed on the cloud next to him. "So are you seriously planning to let me kick you?"

"You won, didn't you? It would hardly be fair for me to go back on it now."

"Yeah, but since when did you care about being fair?"

He shrugged. "Perhaps I'm feeling masochistic."

Rainbow scowled. "If this is a sex thing I am so totally outta here."

Discord burst out laughing. "Oh, Rainbow, if I was inclined to get myself locked up in somepony's play dungeon, you are quite possibly the _last_ pony I would choose. No, this has absolutely nothing to do with sex." He got the laughter under control, and then lost it again, giggling. "But your face when you said that! Oh, if only I'd still been running my film!"

She lifted off the cloud again, hovering, scowling even harder. Finally Discord stopped laughing. "Ah, well, I suppose it's time to take my medicine. Where have you decided to grace my flesh with your firm, shapely hooves?" He snickered a bit.

"You know what? I'm not gonna." She grinned at him, with a tiny touch of malice in her smile. "I just proved that I can kick your flank in a flight competition anytime I want to, even though you're like ten zillion years old and a chaos god and you've got, like, awesome dragon wings, well, except one of them has feathers but you know what I mean. And you just told me that you used to be really into flying and you were really good at it, and I gotta admit, your moves are slick. I've _never_ seen anypony pull off some of the stunts you did. And I _still_ kicked your flank. So here's what I want. I'm not gonna literally kick you, but you're going to admit to all my friends how I totally kicked you in the flank, like, not literally."

"Metaphorically."

"Yeah, that sounds like a Twilight word, so I guess it's right."

Discord shrugged. "Fair enough."

This was why a banner showing a smiling Rainbow Dash, with a hoof up in a victory gesture and a medal around her neck, standing next to a smiling Discord who was waving, presumably at the camera, ended up wrapped around the entire exterior of the Friendship Castle, bearing the legend "LOYALTY DEFEATS CHAOS 1-0; RAINBOW DASH CONFIRMED CHAMPION OF FLIGHT COMPETITION AGAINST DISCORD, SPIRIT OF CHAOS". Because the location of the banner, up high and all around the circumference of the castle, meant it could have been placed by a pegasus, and Twilight would at least have to spend a few minutes figuring out if the culprit was Discord or Rainbow Dash. Discord could play at being humble, if it was funny.

Rainbow Dash denied putting it up, of course, since she didn't, but she did express great disappointment when Twilight insisted on taking it down on the grounds that no sports victory, however profound, could possibly justify wrapping the Friendship Palace in a banner. Especially, Rarity pointed out, one with a garish orange, blue and neon green background. Discord just grinned. Making a banner that would resist the castle's harmonics and not instantly fall apart had been an effort, so when Twilight peeled the banner off, he let it start dissolving... in a way that caused it to split in half, dropping one of the halves on Twilight.

Maybe friendship would allow him to get away with a little, tiny bit of pranking and disharmony-stirring, after all.

That night, after he discovered that a whoopee cushion had been inserted under one of the pillows near the middle of his makeshift bed, where his lower body was likely to be, he just laughed. And carried the deflated whoopee cushion to Twilight's room, knocked on her door, and returned it to her. "A very good effort for a beginner!" he said cheerfully. "Keep trying, and you may graduate to intermediate pranking within a year or two!"

"Oh, I don't know," Twilight said. "If I'm stuck living with you, don't you think that would count as an accelerated course?"

He laughed. "If you're willing to take lessons from the master, I'd be happy to teach."

"Maybe. But don't teach Pinkie or Rainbow. They don't need help."

It was a pleasant end to the day, at least. When he went to bed, he was in good spirits. There was a bit of jostling because apparently Pinkie wanted him to be her teddy bear and not the other way around, so she had a mild objection to him spooning around her and hugging her to his chest like a plush toy, but eventually she ended up draped over his midsection like a small but heavy pink blanket, and he supposed that was good enough.

It didn't last, though.

* * *

"Your friends, in exchange for all the alicorn magic in Equestria!" Tirek boomed, and Discord knew exactly what Twilight would do, exactly how she would respond to this. And then she didn't.

"I can't give you all the alicorn magic!" she shouted, and teleported away.

Discord stared at the place where she'd been in horror. But he _knew_ what she'd do. She would never abandon her friends. This couldn't be happening.

"It seems you were wrong, Discord," Tirek chuckled. He was so huge, dwarfing almost everything else in the landscape. "Do you remember our wager?"

The ponies' lives were forfeit if Twilight didn't surrender. Discord looked at Fluttershy, helplessly, trapped as he was in a bubble of magic the same as she was. "This isn't right," he said. "She couldn't really have left us."

"Oh, but apparently, she did." Tirek smiled, with far too many teeth. "And now I'm afraid it's time for you to pay up."

Discord's bubble moved, so that it was directly in front of Tirek. "Wait, wait!" Discord shouted. "I know Twilight too well! She would never abandon her friends! You need to keep them alive as hostages, because she'll be back!"

"What if you don't know her as well as you think you do?" Tirek asked, sneering.

Discord shook his head frantically. "Twilight would never _do_ this," he said. "This isn't real! That's it, I must be dreaming! None of this is happening!" He tried to force himself to wake up, or take lucid control of the dream, certain that that was what it had to be. Neither one happened.

"Ah, but you were wrong about her once," Tirek said. "You thought you'd defeated her when you hadn't. Couldn't you easily be wrong about her again?"

"No, we're friends now, I _know_ her, she wouldn't leave us—"

"She'd leave _you._"

"She wouldn't leave them!"

"You were wrong about Celestia, too, weren't you? And you thought you knew her. You thought she would never harden herself enough to you to use the Tree against you, and you were wrong. And you were wrong about Fluttershy, when you assumed she expected you to betray her. And weren't you wrong about me as well? Tell me, Discord, when have you _ever_ been right about anypony you thought you knew well?"

Discord kept shaking his head. "This isn't right," he said again, helplessly. "She wouldn't leave her friends."

"She might if it was the only way to save the whole world, sugarcube," Applejack said. "She's led us into danger before. You think she couldn't sacrifice us to save Equestria? It was Celestia who taught her everything she knows, and you know who Celestia was willin' to sacrifice."

"We're not worth all the ponies in Equestria," Fluttershy said.

"That's wrong. You're the only ponies worth anything. The only ones that matter," Discord said. "You're the only ponies to accept me."

"But you can't have everything you want the way you want it if your magic doesn't work," Fluttershy said patiently. "Without your magic, you're nothing, Discord. You can't protect us or yourself because you let Tirek take your power away."

"This isn't real! This is a dream! Let me wake up, _please_ let me wake up..."

"Silly, how can it be a dream if you can't make yourself wake up?" Pinkie said. "If you're always a lucid dreamer and you can take control of a dream as soon as you figure out what it is, and you can't control this, then it's not a dream! Sheesh!"

"The truth is you failed at everything, Discord," Tirek chuckled. "I played you like a harp, and you gave me everything I wanted. And now I'm going to kill you. But first, I promised that you'd get to watch your friends die."

Then Fluttershy, no longer in a bubble, was floating between Discord and Tirek, caught in Tirek's magic. "This is the one who was special to you, isn't it? Your little Fluttershy?"

"Not her, please not her," Discord begged, paws pressed against the bubble like he could break it if he just pushed hard enough. "Please. You don't need to kill them, please."

"But I want to," Tirek said. "Aren't you the one who believed that having the power to do what you want means you have the right to do it?"

He began pulling on Fluttershy's head and body, separately, tugging them in opposite directions. She screamed. "Discord! Help me, please!"

"Don't! Tirek, no, don't do this! Please, I'll do anything!"

"There's nothing you can do," Tirek said. "You're magicless, and that makes you worthless and useless. You have nothing to bargain with."

"DISCORD! Please, Discord, make him stop! Please, he's hurting me!"

"No, please, don't do this to her, t-take me instead if you have to kill someone, please let her go, please—"

Tirek just grinned and kept pulling, and Fluttershy just kept screaming, and nothing Discord could say or do stopped any of it. And then her head popped off her body in a spray of blood. And he couldn't do anything but scream, and scream.

* * *

"Wake up! Discord, you're dreaming, wake up!"

He opened his eyes to find Pinkie Pie, hooves practically glued to the sides of his head and her eyes directly in front of his. He was gasping for breath. "Wh—Pinkie?"

"You were having a bad dream, silly billy! I kept shaking you and shaking you but you wouldn't wake up!"

"How... did you know?"

"That you weren't waking up? It was because your eyes were still closed and—"

"No, how did you know I was having a bad dream?"

"Well, first you got all wiggly and restless and woke me up. And then you were mumbling, but that could've been a good dream, but then you started making this whiny noise and your paws were all clenched up and your head was tossing back and forth and that was how I knew!"

"For future reference," Discord said, getting his breathing back under control with some effort, "if a dreamer sleeps through the end of their dream and goes back into deep sleep, they won't remember that the dream ever even happened. You only remember dreams if you wake up during or right after them. So you should never wake someone from a nightmare; you're just ensuring that they'll remember it forever."

Pinkie's eyes went wide. "Oh no, I'm sorry! I thought I was helping you but if you would've just slept through it and forgotten about it but instead I woke you up and now you remember it that must be awful! But at least you're awake now and not having a bad dream!" She plopped herself onto his lap, looking up at him. "Wanna talk about it? Were there giant flying sharks eating all the pastries? Because when I have nightmares it's usually about giant flying sharks eating all the pastries! Or sometimes it's about baked bads!"

Despite himself, he chuckled slightly. "It wasn't about giant flying sharks, no. And to be honest, no, I don't want to talk about it."

"How come? Talking about my dreams always makes me feel better! Maybe it would make you feel better too!"

He plucked Pinkie off his lap and deposited her on the pillows. "I strongly doubt it," he said, and got to his feet.

"Where are you going? You want me to come with you?"

"_You_ need your sleep, little miss pony. I don't have any parties to minister to in the morning." He grinned at her. "Really, I'm just going to go get some fresh air. Take a little walk, enjoy the moon – it is nighttime, right?"

"Uh-huh." Her eyes narrowed. "Are you _sure_ you're not gonna leave Ponyville?"

"Now why would I want to do that? There's plenty of fresh air right here. Besides, if I were going to break my parole it would _not_ be while Luna is in charge." He shuddered.

"How come she doesn't like you? She was a big meanie pants too who had to get Elements of Harmonized, and now she's all better! You'd think she'd know what it's like!"

"She doesn't think I'm sufficiently remorseful," he said disdainfully. "Apparently I haven't made enough mea culpas and genuflections at the altar of guilt for her to forgive me."

"Well, you _weren't_ really sorry before, you just wanted friends. But now you're really truly sorry so maybe now you and Princess Luna will get along!"

"Stranger things have happened," he said, shrugging. "But it doesn't exactly seem likely." He opened the door to his room. "Get some sleep, Pinkie. I'll be back before long."

Pinkie spread herself out snow angel style. "I'm taking your _pillows..._" she sing-songed.

Discord grinned. "Good night."

* * *

Outside, without the harmonics to interfere, he summoned a scrying spell, allowing a clear, transparent crystal pineapple to form in his hand, each of the facets swirling with potential. _Find Fluttershy_, he commanded the spell.

Two dozen images formed, from every angle, of a hotel room – presumably, in Manehattan – and Fluttershy asleep in bed, mouth open, mane every which way all over the pillows. _It'll just be for a moment. Luna won't even notice, she's busy at night, and Celestia's asleep._ He pinched off the ward that would detect if he left Ponyville – the pinching itself would trigger the ward if he left it that way for more than a few minutes, but it wouldn't notice him leaving if he came back quickly enough – and teleported, silently, into the hotel room.

She was snoring slightly, a sound more adorable than annoying, little squeaks coming out of her as she breathed out. Her chest rose and fell. When he ran his talon through her mane, she mumbled and shifted in her sleep.

Alive. She was alive. It had all been a dream. Not a prophecy, not a memory, not a vision into an alternate reality. Just a horror movie his brain had decided to make up and make him watch while he was sleeping.

The ward couldn't be fooled much longer than this. He teleported back into Ponyville, to the vast tract of apple trees that was Sweet Apple Acres, wrapped himself around the upper branches of an apple tree, and let himself sob with relief for a few minutes, paws to his face and a silencing spell around him so no one, including Winona the dog, could hear him.

Eventually he lowered himself onto the branch completely, no longer keeping his head lifted, and wrapped his arms around it the way his tail and legs already were. It was a thick branch, suitable for sleeping on, and the smell of fresh air and apples and the feel of the chaos of the Everfree, so close by, was much more pleasant than a room full of harmony smelling of nothing but pillows and sweat. The pillows were comfier than a tree branch, and Pinkie made a nice blanket, but he couldn't bear to lock himself away from the majority of his power, not right now. Sleep claimed him, and with his full power at his disposal, this time there were no dreams.

* * *

_For updates and notes about my work, visit my Livejournal at alara-r dot livejournal dot com. (Fanfiction dot net strips links, so I have to write it out like that.)_

_Support my writing and see sneak previews, incompletes, outlines and working notes! Maybe even vote on what I write next, or get me to write you a fic. See my account at www dot dot com slash alarajrogers._


	5. Who Will Bell The Cat?

The only question I have left then is, how do I do it?

I can't just tell them my problems and ask them to turn me to stone. They won't do it. Twilight has incredible naïve faith in the power of harmony and friendship to solve everything. To be fair, pretty much everything she's come up against so far, that's exactly how she solved it, so I can see where she gets that idea, but... I'm the spirit of _disharmony._ Nopony's going to be able to solve _my_ problems with friendship and harmony. Those are, in fact, the reason I'm having problems. If I didn't have friends I wouldn't feel bad about betraying them and I wouldn't hate myself and I wouldn't worry about hurting them if I turn evil, and honestly every part of not having friends sounds better except for the part where now that I've had them I'd rather die than live without anypony caring about me ever. I mean, Tirek was right, when you think about it. It _is_ a weakness. For me. For the ponies it's a strength, but they run on harmony. For me, having friends is killing me, but I want it so badly that even though I know it's killing me I don't want to give it up.

I'm more resilient than that, of course. Sooner or later, if I don't do anything about it, my self-preservation instincts will kick in and make me decide that friendship isn't really all that, and at that point, I'll hurt them. I know their weaknesses even better now than I did before. I know how to destroy each and every one of them, so they'd never be able to wield harmonic power against me or anyone else, ever again. The last time, I just turned them against their elements, but their elements aren't what they live for. I know who they are as ponies now, not just exemplars of their elements, and I know how to destroy them.

No. I don't want to think about this. I don't want to think about how easy it would be to do it. They're my _friends_. I don't want to hurt them. I don't want to fall.

That's why I need them to turn me to stone. But if I just asked them to do it, the way I just asked the Tree, they wouldn't, because they'd be certain they could save me with friendship and harmony, right up until the point I turn on them all and I make Applejack's temper uncontrollable so she hurts a family member gravely in a moment of rage, and I make Rainbow Dash miscalculate where the ground is and break her back so she'll never fly or walk again, and I—

_No._ I already said I wasn't going to think about that. I don't want to do it. I have to stop myself before I do do it, and thinking about it is exactly the wrong thing to do.

So. Can't just ask them. I have to make them think they have to do it.

The obvious way to do that is to make them think I've already turned evil. Don't do anything to hurt _them_, I don't want to hurt them, I want them to stop me. But unleash a good old storm of chaos on everypony else. Make it rain frogs! Turn flowers carnivorous! Turn the sun dark purple and the moon bright yellow! Teach houses to roller skate! Swap the minds of foals and their parents! Make rabbits think they are dragons! Oh, the things I could do, if I cut loose!

That would convince them that I've betrayed them, again, and that their only choice is to turn me to stone. Twilight said she didn't want to do it because she isn't even sure the Rainbow Power can be used against one of the key bringers without breaking it, but I'm pretty sure she's wrong. Celestia broke the Elements by turning them on a fellow _Bearer_, with anguish and disharmony in her heart, and forcing all six of them to operate for her by inflicting the power of Order on Harmony. Harmony comes about from wanting to do the right thing, from more or less spontaneously choosing to work together out of a desire for shared happiness. When you do what you don't want to do, what you hate doing with every fiber of your being, what you will never forgive yourself for, because you believe that you have to do it to maintain things the way they "should" be or to remake the world in the image you believe it should be in... that's Order at work, not Harmony. And Harmony doesn't like being forced by Order any more than Chaos does. Creating disharmony to save the world is Order's job, or sometimes mine, and either way it's inimical to harmony, and that's how the elements broke.

If I make my friends hate me and believe I betrayed them (again), they could use Harmony against me with clear consciences. Maybe... maybe not Fluttershy. Maybe it would cause her pain. But not like the pain Celestia suffered from banishing Luna. Fluttershy doesn't care about me the way Celestia cares about her sister; how could she possibly? I'm not her family. I have no family. The closest I ever had to family _were_ Celestia and Luna, and they turned me to stone with no regrets. So how could Fluttershy possibly care more than they did? She'd be sad, but she'd get over it and forget about me. I already know that Pinkie pretends I'm her friend but would take me down in a moment if she thought I was threatening her other friends. Pinkie has no loyalty to me, she just likes some aspects of my chaos. (And, apparently, sleeping on top of me like I'm a mattress. Maybe she'd regret turning me to stone for that reason, but probably not any others.) And Twilight might claim to be my friend but she still hates chaos, so really when it comes down to it she hates me, so she won't have any regrets. Ditto Rarity. The other two make no secret of the fact that they don't even consider me a friend in the first place.

If I made them think I've turned evil again and I'm out of control and I don't care about friendship anymore... they'd do it. They'd turn me to stone and forget about me.

But I don't want that, either. The thought of hurting Fluttershy even to save her, to make her think I don't value her friendship when I value it so much I'll destroy myself to save her from me... no. I can't bear that, I _can't._ It would be just as bad as the thing I'm trying to save them _from._ Well, not just as bad, because if I actually do turn evil I'll crush the six of them first and make it impossible for them to use their power against me, and if I'm just pretending I won't do anything to directly harm any of them and I'll stand there and let them do it... but still. I can't stand the thought that Fluttershy would turn me to stone and think I don't care about her friendship and that I betrayed her... again. The only way I can face the thought of being trapped with myself for another eternity is if they still care about me, if they know I allowed them to do it.

But I can't tell them why I want them to do it, and if I left a note behind confessing all this and telling them why I made it look like I was betraying them and why I tricked them into thinking they had to turn me into stone... they'd feel really bad about having done it. I mean I think they would anyway. I mean, I hope so. I'm pretty sure Fluttershy would regret it. Mostly pretty sure.

Maybe Pinkie too. _Maybe_.

And besides, they have the power to un-stone me too, so if they found my note they'd just release me and then we're back at square one.

So there's a famous old story, commonly attributed to Aesheep of Minos, about a bunch of mice who are scared of a cat. So they all get together, and one of the smarter mice comes up with the brilliant idea of tying a bell around the cat's neck, so it will jingle when the cat approaches and the mice will know to run away. And that's all well and good and all, and all the mice are enthusiastic about it and think it's a great plan, until one old mouse points out the obvious: who will bell the cat?

In Minos, this was a story about ridiculous, impractical plans, and the moral of the story was supposed to be, no matter how great your plan sounds, it has to be something you can actually _do._ In Equestria, however, they like to tell a modified version involving a team of heroic mice stepping forward and taking the job because harmony and protecting the herd and whatnot.

But neither of these are how it would go, if the mice were a modern, sapient society. What would happen is, as soon as all of the mice agreed that this was the right thing to do, the safe thing, the _harmonious_ thing to do... they would assign the jobs to whoever in mouse society has the task of doing dangerous things. The Mouse Police. The Mouse Army. The Royal Mouse Guard. Something like that. And those mice would have no choice. The _order_ that sapient societies insist on building themselves around says that if it's your job to do a thing, you have to do it. In pony society, cutie marks and the philosophy of harmony ensure that most ponies with a job signed on for it voluntarily and enjoy doing it, even if sometimes they don't enjoy certain aspects of it.

Royal Guardsponies might occasionally have to arrest a friend. They wouldn't like doing it, but they'd do it, if the friend broke the rules in such a way that pony society says they need to be arrested. They wouldn't have to hate their friend to do it. They'd feel bad about doing it, but not bad the way Celestia felt bad about banishing Luna; Celestia wasn't following a law there, she had no higher power she was obeying, no judgement but her own to rely on. She knew that it was all, entirely, her decision to act, and her responsibility for the consequences. Royal Guardsponies who arrest a friend can take refuge in the fact that it was just their job, and it was the decision of ponies higher up than themselves, and their friend knew the rules and broke them anyway so it's their friend's fault. They can still like their friend, they can still consider them a friend, they won't forget about their friend moldering in the dungeons of Canterlot (or, more realistically, a prison outside the city)... but it won't hurt them like it would have if the friend personally betrayed them and _they_ had to make the decision, themselves, to take their friend down.

It's the job of the Elements of Harmony to bell cats, on behalf of the mousy pony herds of Equestria.

I don't have to make my friends believe the only way to stop me is to turn me into stone. I just have to convince the leaders of ponykind that for the things I've _already_ done, I should be turned into stone. This wouldn't be all that hard, considering that I'm almost universally hated among ponies, if it weren't for Celestia. Celestia's a near-absolute monarch; she takes the opinions of her little ponies into consideration, so she won't look like a tyrant, but in the end she does what she wants. She unilaterally decided to give me the slap on the wrist of "town arrest in Ponyville" as my punishment for my betrayal, and when the fact that this was obviously ludicrously biased in my favor led the ponies of Ponyville to shun me and treat me like week-old garbage, and I got sick of it and fled to the moon, thus breaking my parole... she basically just let me out of it. Told me to do community service instead, and that was it.

Celestia must feel guilty for turning me to stone the first time. I don't know why else she wouldn't have thrown the book at me. (Possibly fearing I would eat it.)

It doesn't matter what every other pony in Equestria thinks if Celestia thinks different. Even Luna, technically her co-diarch, defers to Celestia most of the time. And Celestia doesn't seem to want to punish me. Obviously she too has been drawn in by the idea that Twilight can fix everything with friendship and harmony, and she doesn't want to go back to the days of making harsh decisions herself. She'd rather dump them on Twilight. But politics isn't a realm she can shoot rainbow lasers at, or have Twilight do it, and Celestia _will_ do things she doesn't want to do if she fears the political consequences of not doing them.

So I either have to convince Celestia that she should order the Bearers to do what I know they have to do, or I have to convince Celestia that there will be civil unrest if she doesn't do it regardless of what she might want, and I know which avenue sounds more fun. Hey, I'm plotting my own self-destruction here, I can at least enjoy stirring up a little chaos in a good cause on my way out. Besides, Celestia's stubborn. She won't change her mind about thinking I can be redeemed if I hurt her feelings – she gave me another chance after I _stood there and let Tirek throw her in Tartarus._ It might take the same level of effort to convince her that she should order Twilight and pals to stone me as it would take to convince _them_.

I've hurt Celestia enough for one lifetime. She gave it back to me more than she got, in the end, but still. I don't think I could call her a friend, not anymore, but I don't want to make her think I've betrayed her again, either.

So. All I have to do is get enough ponies, with enough power and loud enough voices, riled up against me that they'll demand that Celestia have the Bearers turn me to stone, and she'll have to do it to pacify her citizens. It's perfect. Celestia will do it to stop civil unrest, Twilight will do it because Celestia told her to, and if Fluttershy balks because she promised me, I'll just tell her I release her from my promise and I'm willingly accepting my punishment, and then she'll do it because Celestia told her to, too. Then they won't hate me and they'll feel sorry for me and they'll feel bad for what they did, but not bad enough to undo it, because they'll all believe it was what I deserved under the law even if they don't like doing it to me because I'm their friend. Assuming they even care. I'm pretty sure Fluttershy will care, though.

And then—

It doesn't matter what happens to me, then. They'll be safe. Twilight's an alicorn and if I'm right about how the Rainbow Power works... the six of them will be around, enforcing the will of Harmony, for a very long time. So if I break, and I decide that I hate them all and I want to destroy their world and laugh while they cry, it won't matter because I won't be able to do it.

...and maybe they'll care enough to actually come talk to me, sometimes. About something other than how sorry they are. I got _so_ sick of Celestia's worthless apologies, but I wouldn't mind listening to a friend come talk to me and distract me from how awful it'll be...

No. Stay focused. It doesn't matter how awful it'll be, because I deserve it. I know that. If I lose my nerve, if I decide to go with what my selfishness tells me to do for my own sake and not what I know I have to do for Fluttershy and the others... I know them too well. If I break, if I go back to being the bad guy, I could destroy all six of them so easily. I can't do that. I can't do that to them. I hate myself for even thinking about it.

I have to do this for Fluttershy. Even if it hurts her, it's for her own good. She should never have tried to make friends with me. She should have known I'd betray her eventually. But she doesn't learn. Even now after I've already done it, even now after Applejack more or less flat out told her that I can't be anypony's friend because I'm disharmony incarnate, she still believes in me. If I go bad again, she'll never see it coming. I have to protect her from that.

* * *

_For updates and notes about my work, visit my Livejournal at alara-r dot livejournal dot com. (Fanfiction dot net strips links, so I have to write it out like that.)_

_Support my writing and see sneak previews, incompletes, outlines and working notes! Maybe even vote on what I write next, or get me to write you a fic. See my account at www dot dot com slash alarajrogers._


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